June 2026 was a tough month for developer free tiers. With 11 negative changes versus 3 positive, the trend continues toward tighter limits and eliminated offerings. Developers relying on free tiers should review their dependencies.
17
Total Changes +7 vs last month
11
Negative +5 vs last month
3
Positive +2 vs last month
3
Neutral
Changes by Type
Change Type
Count
Limits Reduced
4
Product Deprecated
3
Pricing Restructured
2
Free Tier Removed
2
Restriction
2
Limits Increased
2
New Free Tier
1
Rebranded
1
Biggest Losers
Vendors whose changes cost users more
GitHub Copilot (2 negative changes: new free-tier restriction; pricing changed)
GitHub retired premium requests and now bills every Copilot plan in GitHub AI Credits. Copilot Free kept 2,000 code completions a month, and its 50 chat and agent requests a month became an allowance of AI credits. Plan prices did not change: Pro at $10 a month now includes $15 of usage and Pro+ at $39 includes $70, and the new Max plan is $100 with $200. Source ↗
GitHub limited Copilot Free and Copilot Student to auto model selection, so Free users can no longer choose which model answers. Source ↗
Hetzner (1 negative change: paid pricing changed)
From 2026-06-15, for new orders and rescales, Hetzner's EU cloud prices excluding IPv4 rose 30-38% on Cost-Optimized CX/CAX, 144-175% on Regular Performance CPX (shared resources) and 113-173% on General Purpose CCX (dedicated vCPUs). Existing contracts kept their terms. New dedicated servers also rose: the AX42 and AX102 cost €97.30 and €257.30 from 30 June, up from €57.30 and €122.30 after April in Germany. Source ↗
Google Tenor API (1 negative change: product ends; its free plan ends with it)
Google Tenor API shut down on June 30, 2026, and new API key sign-ups stopped on January 13, 2026. Only the API ended: Tenor.com, the GIF Keyboard apps and Gboard still serve Tenor GIFs. Developers who used the API need another GIF API. Source ↗
Burnermail (1 negative change: free tier removed)
Burner Mail removed its public Free plan on 2026-06-27. New users must upgrade to a paid plan before creating burner addresses or mailboxes. Existing free users keep their current free limits. Source ↗
Kiro stopped giving new users 500 bonus credits on sign-up, usable within 30 days, and now credits $20 toward the first paid plan instead. The change falls between the 2026-05-02 and 2026-06-03 captures of kiro.dev/pricing. Source ↗
Foursquare cut the free Places API allowance on Pro endpoints from 10,000 to 500 calls a month, effective 2026-06-01. Its docs: "Beginning June 1, 2026, the following Places API & V2 Pro endpoint rates go into effect for all users: 0 - 500 calls – $0.00 CPM ... You will now receive 500 free Pro calls." Source ↗
Google Gemini Code Assist (1 negative change: free tier removed)
Google stopped serving Gemini Code Assist for individuals, its free tier, on 2026-06-18. The IDE extensions and Gemini CLI no longer accept Login with Google for the individuals, Google AI Pro and Google AI Ultra tiers. Google stopped selling new Standard and Enterprise subscriptions on 2026-10-09. Existing subscribers can add licenses until 2027-01-31. Annual subscriptions can auto-renew until 2027-01-31; monthly subscriptions can auto-renew until 2027-12-31. Agentic coding assistance is now available through Antigravity, included in Gemini Enterprise editions. Source ↗
Gemini CLI (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
Gemini CLI stopped accepting Login with Google for personal accounts on 2026-06-18, which ended the personal-account free tier of 60 requests a minute and 1,000 a day. It still runs with a Gemini API key, Vertex AI, or a Gemini Code Assist Standard or Enterprise licence. Source ↗
Appwrite began deleting Free projects that stay paused for 90 days, with all their resources. Owners get email alerts before anything is deleted. Source ↗
Permit.io's pricing page added a limit of 2,000 relationship tuples to its free Community plan. The row first appears between the Internet Archive's captures of 2026-05-23 and 2026-06-09; the plan's other limits were unchanged. Source ↗
Biggest Winners
Vendors that added or expanded free tiers
Weaviate (1 positive change)
Weaviate Cloud replaced its 14-day sandbox trial with an always-free cluster (100,000 objects, 1 GB memory, 10 GB disk, 1 collection), announced on 2026-06-17: "The Weaviate Cloud managed database is now genuinely free, without a credit card or time expiration." Source ↗
AWS Activate (1 positive change)
AWS raised Activate Portfolio from up to $100,000 to up to $200,000 in credits. aws.amazon.com/startups/credits/ said "Up to $100,000 USD AWS Activate Credits" in the Internet Archive's capture of 2026-05-31 and "Up to $200,000 USD in Activate Credits" in the capture of 2026-06-14. Source ↗
UptimeRobot (1 positive change)
UptimeRobot's terms stopped limiting the Free plan to personal, non-commercial use between 2026-06-08 and 2026-06-11. The terms now allow commercial and business use. Source ↗
Deprecations and Other Changes
Changes counted as neither negative nor positive, such as products and models retired or closed to new users
Google Gemini API (product deprecated 2026-06-01)
Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite were shut down on 2026-06-01, as Google announced on 2026-02-18. Google names gemini-3.6-flash as the replacement for 2.0 Flash and gemini-3.1-flash-lite for 2.0 Flash-Lite. Source ↗
Windsurf (rebranded 2026-06-02)
Cognition renamed Windsurf Devin Desktop. Existing Windsurf users kept their plans and prices. Source ↗
AWS (product deprecated 2026-06-30)
Fargate platform version 1.3.0 reached end of support on June 30, 2026. AWS blocked new tasks and services on it from June 15 and said it would terminate the tasks still running on it on June 30. Platform version 1.4.0 replaces it. Source ↗