July 2026 was a tough month for developer free tiers. With 5 negative changes versus 1 positive, the trend continues toward tighter limits and eliminated offerings. Developers relying on free tiers should review their dependencies.
6
Total Changes -9 vs last month
5
Negative -5 vs last month
1
Positive -1 vs last month
0
Neutral
Changes by Type
Change Type
Count
Limits Reduced
4
Free Tier Removed
1
New Tier
1
Biggest Losers
Vendors that eliminated or reduced free tiers
Roboflow (1 negative change)
Roboflow's free Public plan went from "$60/mo free credits" to "15 credits / month" between the Internet Archive's 2026-06-23 and 2026-07-30 captures of its pricing page. Roboflow states no dollar value for a credit; its Core plan sells 50 credits for $99 a month. Source ↗
Cloudflare Workers AI (1 negative change)
On 2026-07-28 Cloudflare took Kimi K2.6, Kimi K2.7 Code and GLM-5.2 off the Workers Free plan; they now need the Workers Paid plan (or, from 2026-08-07, prepaid AI Gateway credits). Source ↗
Exa (1 negative change)
Between 2026-07-17 and 2026-07-24, Exa replaced its free tier of up to 20,000 requests a month with $10 of credits a month, plus $20 of credits on sign-up. Source ↗
Phase Two (1 negative change)
Phase Two shut down its free shared realms on 2026-07-30, 30 days after announcing it on 2026-06-30. Its cheapest plan is now the Starter cluster at $149 a month, with a 30-day free trial. Source ↗
Mercury (1 negative change)
Mercury paused its Google Cloud perk. mercury.com/perks/google-cloud offered "Google Cloud and Firebase costs covered up to $200,000 USD over 2 years" in the Internet Archive's capture of 2026-02-10 and said "Offer temporarily unavailable. New offer coming later this year" in the capture of 2026-07-02, as it does today. Source ↗
Biggest Winners
Vendors that added or expanded free tiers
Amazon Kiro (1 positive change)
Kiro added a Pro Max plan at $100 per user a month with 5,000 credits, between Pro+ and Power. It first appears on kiro.dev/pricing between the 2026-06-03 and 2026-07-10 captures. Source ↗