June 2025 was a tough month for developer free tiers. With 5 negative changes versus 0 positive, the trend continues toward tighter limits and eliminated offerings. Developers relying on free tiers should review their dependencies.
5
Total Changes +3 vs last month
5
Negative +3 vs last month
0
Positive
0
Neutral
Changes by Type
Change Type
Count
Limits Reduced
3
Pricing Restructured
1
Product Deprecated
1
Biggest Losers
Vendors whose changes cost users more
Cursor (1 negative change: pricing changed)
Cursor moved Pro from 500 requests a month to usage-based pricing and introduced a $200/month Ultra tier. Source ↗
Backlight (1 negative change: product ends; its free plan ends with it)
Backlight.dev, a design-system platform, shut down on 2025-06-01. A banner announcing the shutdown went up between 2025-03-16 and 2025-03-25. Source ↗
Wikifactory ended its self-serve free Starter plan (a personal workspace with 10 GB of private storage) between 2025-02-11 and 2025-06-23. Free hosting remains for open-source projects, now called Discovery, and paid workspaces became CAD ROOMS. Source ↗
Railway's trial credit now expires. The one-time $5 grant, which previously did not expire, lasts 30 days. The Internet Archive's 2025-06-26 capture still says the credits do not expire; the 2025-06-30 capture says they expire in 30 days. Source ↗
Cloudflare for Startups (1 negative change: free tier limits reduced)
Cloudflare capped its startup programme's Workers AI credits at $50,000. The Internet Archive's capture of cloudflare.com/forstartups on 2025-05-23 capped only R2 and Cache Reserve; the capture of 2025-06-04 adds "$50,000 of Credits for any Workers AI services". Source ↗