September 2026 was a tough month for developer free tiers. With 8 negative changes versus 0 positive, the trend continues toward tighter limits and eliminated offerings. Developers relying on free tiers should review their dependencies.
13
Total Changes same as last month
8
Negative -2 vs last month
0
Positive -2 vs last month
5
Neutral
Changes by Type
Change Type
Count
Product Deprecated
6
Limits Reduced
3
Pricing Restructured
2
Free Tier Removed
1
Restriction
1
Biggest Losers
Vendors whose changes cost users more
DeepSeek API (1 negative change: paid pricing changed)
On 2026-09-10, DeepSeek released deepseek-flash (V4.1-Flash) and retired deepseek-v4-flash and deepseek-v4-flash-vision-exp. These retired names still route to V4.1-Flash at Flash prices. Flash prices fell from 04:00 UTC; V4 Pro prices did not change. Source ↗
CockroachDB stopped offering its free Basic plan (50 million RUs and 10 GiB of storage free per month) to new deployments on 2026-09-15, when it moved new clusters to Cockroach Continuum pricing. New Cloud organizations now get a 30-day free trial with $400 in credit. Clusters created before 2026-09-15 stay on their existing plans during their current term. Source ↗
Postman's Free plan no longer includes cloud performance testing. Its pricing table gave Free "Performance testing (unlimited runs)" on the Internet Archive's capture of 2026-08-20, cloud runs at $0.04 per virtual-user hour on 2026-09-09, and marks cloud performance testing unavailable on Free from the capture of 2026-09-18; local performance testing stays unlimited. In the same window the table stopped calling Free's mock servers unlimited, and it states no limit for them. Source ↗
Pipedream (1 negative change: product ends; its free plan ends with it)
Pipedream stopped taking new signups and subscriptions for Workflows on 2026-09-30 and said Workflows and String will shut down on 2027-03-31. Existing workflows keep running until then. Pipedream Connect is not affected; its Free plan covers development only. Source ↗
Google Gemini API (1 negative change: new free-tier restriction)
Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Source ↗
Google (1 negative change: pricing changed)
On 2026-09-18 Google stopped renewing every remaining standalone Google Developer Program Premium subscription, Workspace accounts included. Monthly subscribers keep Premium benefits until 2026-10-18 and annual subscribers until 2027-09-18; their membership then returns to the standard tier. Google recommends AI Pro or AI Ultra for consumers, and Gemini Enterprise for enterprises. Source ↗
Since September 1, 2026, the Starter plan's $30 of monthly compute no longer covers Modal's Shared Endpoints: their tokens are billed from the first request, even before the $30 is used. Source ↗
On September 7, 2026, CodeSandbox stopped including VM credits in its Free plan: new accounts get no free credits, so VM Sandboxes need a paid plan. Free balances from before were not cleared at once, and paid plans kept their credits. Source ↗
Deprecations and Other Changes
Changes counted as neither negative nor positive, such as products and models retired or closed to new users
Groq (product deprecated 2026-09-14)
Groq replaced Qwen3.6 27B (qwen/qwen3.6-27b) with its successor, Qwen3.8 27B (qwen/qwen3.8-27b), on its free and developer plans on September 14, 2026, and shut qwen/qwen3.6-27b down that day; code that calls it needs the new model ID. Source ↗
Groq (product deprecated 2026-09-21)
Groq keeps running. Groq decommissioned its Compound and Compound Mini systems, model IDs groq/compound and groq/compound-mini, on September 21, 2026, after announcing it on August 24; requests to those IDs return errors. Groq named no replacement. Source ↗
OpenAI (product deprecated 2026-09-24)
Sora 2 video generation in the OpenAI API shut down on September 24, 2026: OpenAI removed the Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro models, and names no replacement. Source ↗
OpenAI (product deprecated 2026-09-28)
gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, babbage-002, davinci-002 and gpt-3.5-turbo-1106 shut down in the OpenAI API on September 28, 2026. OpenAI names gpt-5.6-terra as the replacement. Source ↗
AWS (product deprecated 2026-09-30)
AWS App Mesh reached end of support on 2026-09-30. AWS: "After September 30, 2026, you will no longer be able to access the AWS App Mesh console or AWS App Mesh resources." AWS points App Mesh users to Amazon ECS Service Connect. Source ↗