Free tier cheat sheet
What the free plan of every tool we’ve tested includes, and the catch. Every line comes from a verdict page and its test log; vendor plan facts link to the vendor’s pricing page there.
| Tool | Free plan includes | The catch | Source |
|---|---|---|---|
| Clerk (Hobby) Login pick, 98/100 | Free with no card, 50,000 monthly retained users per app, up to 3 social logins. | Sessions fixed at 7 days. Pro is $25/mo, or $20/mo billed annually. | Add login checked Oct 15, 2026 |
| Firebase Auth (Spark) Login runner-up, 94/100 | No cost and no payment method. Email/password login, 50K monthly active users no-cost via Identity Platform. | 1,000 verification emails and 150 password-reset emails a day. Phone login needs the paid Blaze plan. | Add login checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Supabase (Free) Login, also tested, 91/100 | $0 for 50,000 monthly active users, a 500 MB database and 2 active projects. | Free projects pause after 1 week of inactivity. Leaked-password protection isn’t included. | Add login checked Oct 15, 2026 |
| Cloudflare Pages (Free) Hosting pick, 85/100 | 500 builds a month, 100 custom domains per project, 20,000 files per site. | One build at a time. Express APIs need rewriting to run on Workers. | Custom domain checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Vercel (Hobby) Hosting runner-up, 86/100 | 50 domains per project, 100 deployments a day. | Non-commercial and personal use only. | Custom domain checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Supabase Security Advisor Security pick, 76/100 | Built in. Supabase’s docs list no plan limit, and its checks ran on our Free-plan test project on Oct 23, 2026. Supabase hasn’t confirmed it as a Free-plan feature. | Only checks your database, not your code or packages. | Security check checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Aikido (free Developer plan) Security runner-up, 66/100 | Code, secrets and dependency scanning, with an account. | Caps of 10 repos, 2 users and 10 AutoFixes a month. AI Code Analysis uses paid credits (none on Free). | Security check checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Semgrep Community Edition Security, also tested, 63/100 | Free and open source (LGPL 2.1), runs on your machine, no account. | Dependency scanning is in Semgrep’s paid platform, not the free CLI. | Security check checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| GitHub code & secret scanning Security, also tested, 60/100 | Free on public repos. Dependabot alerts are free everywhere. | On private repos, code scanning and secret scanning are paid add-ons on a Team or Enterprise plan. | Security check checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Prodable Security, also tested, 57/100 | The live-URL scan is free; an email unlocks the full list. | Deep Scan is $27 one-time (shown on our scan report, not on its pricing page). | Security check checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| VibeScan Security, skip, 54/100 | The URL scan is free. | It couldn’t scan our app: every attempt ended with no findings. | Security check checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Neon (Free) Database pick, 100/100 | $0, no card. 100 projects, 100 CU-hours a month and 1 GB storage per project. | Scales to zero after 5 minutes idle. Instant restore only covers up to 6 hours or 1 GB of changes. | Database checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Cloudflare D1 (Workers Free) Database runner-up, 98/100 | 5 million rows read and 100,000 rows written a day, 5 GB total storage, 7 days of Time Travel. | 500 MB per database. Queries fail at the daily limit until 00:00 UTC. | Database checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Supabase Postgres (Free) Database, also tested, 91/100 | $0 for a 500 MB database, 5 GB egress and 1 GB file storage. | Pauses after 1 week of inactivity; 2 active projects. Daily backups need Pro, from $25/month. | Database checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Supabase Storage (Free) File uploads pick, 96/100 (tie-breaker) | 1 GB file storage, 5 GB egress plus 5 GB cached egress. | 50 MB max upload size. Pauses after 1 week of inactivity. Pro from $25/month. | File uploads checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Vercel Blob (Hobby) File uploads runner-up, 96/100 | 1 GB storage a month, 10,000 simple and 2,000 advanced operations, 10 GB transfer. Never charged on Hobby. | Shared with your other Vercel usage. Go over and Blob stops working until 30 days pass. | File uploads checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Resend (Free) Email pick, 100/100 | 3,000 emails a month, 3 domains. | Capped at 100 a day. Pro is $20/month for 50,000 emails. | App emails checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Postmark (Free) Email, also tested, 56/100 | 100 emails a month, no overages. | In our test it couldn’t email users until a staff review. Basic from $15/month for 10,000 emails. | App emails checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Polar (Starter) Payments pick, 91/100 | $0 a month; test in a sandbox with no card on file. | 5% + 50¢ per sale ($1.70 on $24), +1.5% for non-US cards, plus Stripe’s payout fees. 7-day settlement delay. | Payments checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Lemon Squeezy Payments runner-up, 87/100 | $0 a month; test mode with no card on file. | 5% + 50¢ per sale, +1.5% for non-US cards. Payouts twice a month after a 13-day hold, $50 minimum. | Payments checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Whisper via faster-whisper Captions pick, 96/100 | Free and open source (MIT code and weights), runs offline on your computer, no usage limits. | The small.en model is a 464 MB download. | Captions checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Vosk Captions, also tested, 68/100 | Free and open source (Apache 2.0), runs offline, no usage limits. 128 MB model. | Missed our accuracy bar: 12.3% word errors vs Whisper’s 7.7%. | Captions checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Kokoro Voiceover pick, 91/100 (tie-breaker) | Free and open source (Apache 2.0 model and voices), runs offline, no usage limits, commercial use allowed. | Misreads prices and abbreviations; write “24 dollars” in full. | Voiceover checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Piper Voiceover runner-up, 91/100 | Free and open source, runs offline, no usage limits. You can use the audio commercially. | The engine is GPL-3.0: building it into a closed-source app comes with GPL conditions. | Voiceover checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| LanguageTool (open-source server) Grammar pick, 100/100 (tie-breaker) | Free and open source (LGPL 2.1), runs on your own machine with no account or usage limits. | Needs Java 17 or newer and used about 680 MB of memory. | Grammar checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Harper Grammar runner-up, 100/100 | Free and open source (Apache 2.0), runs locally, no account or usage limits. | Caught fewer mistakes in our test: 29 of 40 vs LanguageTool’s 36. | Grammar checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Docling PDF tables pick, 100/100 | Free and open source (MIT; models Apache-2.0 / CDLA-Permissive-2.0), runs offline on a CPU, no usage limits. | One-time model download; about 1.5 GB of memory and 2.3 s a page. | PDF tables checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| pdfplumber PDF tables, also tested, 66/100 | Free and open source (MIT), tiny and fast (46 MB, 0.03 s a page). | With default settings it only found tables with full borders, and it can’t read scans. | PDF tables checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Trafilatura Web-to-text pick, 100/100 | Free and open source (Apache-2.0), runs locally, no usage limits. | Doesn’t run JavaScript; pages built in the browser need a headless browser first. | Web page to text checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Mozilla Readability Web-to-text runner-up, 80/100 | Free and open source (Apache-2.0), no usage limits. | In Node.js it needs jsdom (Node 22+); 60 ms a page and 1.3 GB in our run. | Web page to text checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| Node-RED Workflow automation pick, 96/100 | Free and open source (Apache-2.0), self-hosted with no execution limits; you pay only for your server. | No login on the editor until you set one up, and no run history. | Workflow automation checked Oct 16, 2026 |
| n8n (Community, self-hosted) Workflow automation runner-up, 94/100 | $0 self-hosted with no execution limits, for your own internal business or non-commercial use. | Fair-code licence limits reselling or hosting it for others. Sends usage data by default. | Workflow automation checked Oct 16, 2026 |
Scroll sideways for more columns →
All our test runs for these jobs cost $0 on free plans, sandboxes or open-source tools. Scores are from our tests; the full method is on our principles page.
Plans change often. Check the vendor’s pricing page before you commit; our verdict pages link to each one.
Know when a free tier changes
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