April 2026 was a tough month for developer free tiers. With 130 negative changes versus 18 positive, the trend continues toward tighter limits and eliminated offerings. Developers relying on free tiers should review their dependencies.
192
Total Changes +173 vs last month
130
Negative +119 vs last month
18
Positive +15 vs last month
44
Neutral
Changes by Type
Change Type
Count
Product Deprecated
59
Free Tier Removed
40
Limits Reduced
27
Pricing Restructured
24
Rebranded
19
Limits Increased
14
Pricing Model Change
3
New Free Tier
3
Restriction
1
New Tier
1
Pricing Postponed
1
Biggest Losers
Vendors that eliminated or reduced free tiers
AWS (3 negative changes)
AWS App Runner closed to new customers. Service enters maintenance mode with no new features. AWS recommends migrating to Amazon ECS Express Mode for simplified container deployment.
AWS WorkSpaces Thin Client end of availability. AWS stopping sales of Thin Client devices. Existing devices continue working but no new hardware can be purchased.
Node.js 20 AWS Lambda runtime 3-phase deprecation begins. Phase 1 (April 30): no new function creation. Phase 2 (June 30): no function updates. Phase 3 (August 30): no invocations.
Drift (2 negative changes)
Removed: source page no longer accessible or deal program discontinued
Acquired by Salesloft, startup program discontinued
Xata (1 negative change)
Xata pivoted to open source (Apache 2.0) in April 2026. SaaS free tier (15 GB storage, 75 req/s, 10 branches, daily backups) retired. Free-forever usage now requires self-hosting on Kubernetes; the managed platform is paid with a 14-day free trial and $100 credit.
everystep-automation.com (1 negative change)
Reclassified from Free to Trial tier. No permanent free plan exists — product offers a 30-day free trial only, after which paid licenses are required.
Google Gemini API (1 negative change)
Billing-account-level spend caps enforced starting April 1, 2026. When a tier's spend cap is reached, API requests pause until the next billing month. Affects pay-as-you-go developers who may see unexpected request pausing.
Augment Code (1 negative change)
Free tier removed. Lowest plan is now Indie at $20/month with 40K credits. Credit-based consumption model replaces flat per-seat pricing
Xata Lite (1 negative change)
Xata Lite returned HTTP 410 Gone. Service has been discontinued.
stathat.com (1 negative change)
Domain no longer resolves (DNS ENOTFOUND).
SurrealDB Cloud (1 negative change)
Free tier memory reduced from 1 GB to 512 MB
codehooks.io (1 negative change)
Storage reduced from 5GB to 150MB database + 1GB file storage. Developer seats reduced from 2 to 1.
Biggest Winners
Vendors that added or expanded free tiers
Amazon Kiro (2 positive changes)
Amazon Kiro AI coding assistant launched GA with tiered credit-based pricing: Free tier (50 credits/month), Pro ($20/month, 1,000 credits), Pro+ ($40/month, 2,000 credits). Credits metered to 0.01 increments, model-dependent rates.
Amazon Kiro launched GA with a free tier of 50 credits/month. Claude-powered IDE focused on spec-driven development. Pro $20/mo (1,000 credits), Pro+ $40/mo (2,000), Power $200/mo (10,000). Credits metered to 0.01 increments, model-dependent rates. $0.04 overage per credit. Enterprise tier available.
Hasura Cloud (1 positive change)
Hasura DDN Free plan replaced the legacy Hasura Cloud free tier (60 req/min, 1 GB passthrough). Free tier now offers unlimited API requests, unlimited concurrent users, and unlimited models at any scale. Restrictions: 1 supergraph developer and 15-minute observability retention.
Cursor (1 positive change)
Cursor introduced Pro+ tier at $60/month between Pro ($20) and Ultra ($200). Pro+ includes 10x premium model requests vs Pro, priority access, and expanded context window. Expands the pricing ladder from 3 tiers (Free/Pro/Ultra) to 4 (Free/Pro/Pro+/Ultra), filling the $20-$200 gap.
Socket.dev (1 positive change)
Private repo free tier expanded from 1 repo to unlimited repos with 1,000 scans/month and up to 5 members
LocalStack (1 positive change)
Community Emulator still available as open source despite earlier discontinuation announcement. Free tier rebranded as Hobby plan with 30+ services
Prisma Accelerate (1 positive change)
Free tier operations increased from 60,000 to 100,000/month. Max response size changed from 5 MB to unlimited.
SeaTable (1 positive change)
Free tier row limit increased from 2,000 to 10,000
economize.cloud (1 positive change)
Free tier cloud spend limit increased from $5,000/month GCP-only to $100,000/month across all cloud providers (AWS, Azure, GCP)
deployhq.com (1 positive change)
Free tier expanded from 1 project with 10 daily deployments to 3 projects with unlimited deployments
Renamer.ai (1 positive change)
Free Starter Plan increased from 15 to 25 files/month