March 2026 was a tough month for developer free tiers. With 16 negative changes versus 3 positive, the trend continues toward tighter limits and eliminated offerings. Developers relying on free tiers should review their dependencies.
21
Total Changes +2 vs last month
16
Negative -2 vs last month
3
Positive +2 vs last month
2
Neutral
Changes by Type
Change Type
Count
Restriction
5
Free Tier Removed
5
Pricing Restructured
3
Limits Increased
2
Product Deprecated
2
Limits Reduced
2
New Free Tier
1
Rebranded
1
Biggest Losers
Vendors whose changes cost users more
Postman (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
Free plan now single-user only. Team collaboration (shared workspaces, collection sharing) requires paid plan at $19/user/month Source ↗
Xero Developer API (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
Xero retired its revenue-share model on 2 March 2026 for five plans priced by connections and data egress. The free Starter plan allows up to 5 connected organisations; Core costs AUD 35 a month for up to 50. Data from Xero's APIs may not be used to train AI or machine-learning models Source ↗
LocalStack (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
On 2026-03-23 LocalStack ended support for its Community edition. From that date its latest image needed an account and an auth token, and its free plan, Hobby, was for non-commercial use. Commercial use needs a paid plan. Source ↗
Google (1 negative change: pricing changed)
Standalone Google Developer Program Premium stopped renewing on personal (@gmail.com) accounts: annual plans after 2026-03-30, monthly plans after 2026-06-30. Google had begun folding its benefits, including Cloud credits, into Google AI Pro and AI Ultra on 2026-01-27. Premium on Workspace accounts did not change. Source ↗
HashiCorp's legacy free plan for HCP Terraform reached end of life on March 31, 2026. Legacy free plan users were auto-migrated to the enhanced free tier with different limits: 500 managed resources (previously unlimited for small teams), unlimited users, 1 concurrent run, SSO, and policy as code (Sentinel + OPA) Source ↗
Freshping (1 negative change: free tier removed)
Freshping shut down entirely. Free accounts disabled March 6, 2026. Paid plans expire at end of term. All data deleted 90 days later (~June 4, 2026). No replacement product offered by Freshworks Source ↗
Between 2026-03-18 and 2026-03-19, xAI put Grok Imagine image and video generation behind a paywall for free Grok users. SuperGrok ($30/month) included it, and from 2026-03-25 SuperGrok Lite ($10/month) included basic images and videos. Source ↗
Windsurf (1 negative change: pricing changed)
Windsurf replaced credits-based pricing with daily/weekly quotas (Mar 19, 2026). New tiers: Pro $20/mo (was $15), Teams $40/user/month, Max $200/month. Free tier changed from flexible credits to hard quotas. Existing Pro subscribers grandfathered at $15/mo Source ↗
Zenkit (1 negative change: free tier removed)
Zenkit removed its free Personal plan from its pricing page between 2026-02-03 and 2026-03-06. Plus, Team, Business and Enterprise remain, with a 14-day trial. Source ↗
HostedScan (1 negative change: free tier removed)
HostedScan removed its Free plan (Lite Scans, up to 3 targets) between 2026-01-25 and 2026-03-05; Basic, with a free trial, became the entry plan. Source ↗
HeyForm (1 negative change: free tier removed)
HeyForm ended its hosted free plan between 2026-03-01 and 2026-03-29, when its site relaunched. Paid plans start at $15 a month billed annually, with a 7-day trial; self-hosting the open-source version stays free. Source ↗
GitHub Copilot (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
Student plan now managed under dedicated 'GitHub Copilot Student' plan. Premium models (GPT-5.4, Claude Opus, Claude Sonnet) removed from manual self-selection — still available via Auto mode (system picks the model). Source ↗
smartlook.com (1 negative change: product ends; its free plan ends with it)
CertKit cut its Free plan from 3 host agents to 1 between 2026-02-19 and 2026-03-21. Source ↗
Google Gemini API (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API or AI Studio. Source ↗
Biggest Winners
Vendors that added or expanded free tiers
Neon (1 positive change)
Neon's Free plan went from one member per organization to unlimited members. Source ↗
Unity DevOps (1 positive change)
Free tier significantly expanded: storage 5x increase to 25 GB, 100 GB egress added (new), per-seat charges removed. Unity DevOps (formerly Plastic SCM) now offers generous free version control for game developers Source ↗
Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL (1 positive change)
Aurora PostgreSQL Serverless added to AWS Free Tier — managed PostgreSQL-compatible database now available at no cost with up to 4 ACUs per cluster and 1 GB storage. Part of AWS Free Plan (6 months + credits) Source ↗
Deprecations and Other Changes
Changes counted as neither negative nor positive, such as products and models retired or closed to new users
Compare JSON (rebranded 2026-03-03)
DiffJSON was renamed Compare JSON between 2026-02-26 and 2026-03-03, and diffjson.com now 301-redirects to comparejson.com. The tool stayed free, with no sign-up and no pricing. Source ↗
Firebase (product deprecated 2026-03-19)
Google announced the sunset of Firebase Studio (formerly Project IDX) on 2026-03-19. New workspaces and signups stopped on 2026-06-22, and Firebase Studio shuts down on 2027-03-22, when remaining data is deleted. Other Firebase products are not affected. Source ↗