Free-Tier Change Tracker, Week of October 18, 2026: 3 New Q4 Cuts, an Upcoming-Deadline Watch List, and 7 Free Tiers That Grew
Three more free tiers were cut between October 4 and October 18, 2026, and this edition leads with that delta. The October 11 edition covered the Q1–Q3 cuts from the same aggregator; this one starts with the fortnight’s changes, then widens to the full 2026 picture. The direction is still net negative — 23 free tiers removed, 56 limits reduced, 13 new or increased and 39 restructured in 2026 so far, net −66 across 158 changes tracked (AgentDeals Pricing Changes).
Keep the two AgentDeals pages separate. The Free Tier Tracker’s high-impact cut list for January 1 – October 18, 2026 contains 14 removals, 12 cuts, and 6 deprecations or shutdowns; it tracks 465 pricing changes across 1,493 developer tools and is “Published 2026-03-27 · Reviewed 2026-09-12, corrections outstanding” (Free Tier Tracker).
Below: the three new Q4 cuts, a deadline watch list, all 15 Q3 cuts still in force, the wider 2026 record, the counter-trend, four patterns attributed to AgentDeals, and a method block.
What’s New This Fortnight: 3 Q4 Cuts (Oct 4–18)
| Vendor | What changed | Effective date / range | Cheapest paid option | Migration path | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Tugboat | Free plan removed | 2026-08-24 to 2026-10-16 (range) | Intro, $39/month | None named; cheapest stated floor is Intro at $39/month | Tugboat pricing |
| lensdump.com | Free plan removed for new accounts (ToS 6.1: new accounts are created on a Paid Plan) | ToS effective 2026-10-10 | Paid plans are Spark, Ember, Superhero, Titan and Angel; prices on the plans page | Keep an existing free account; new accounts cannot select Free | lensdump Terms of Service |
| Browser Use | One-time sign-up credit cut from $15 to $1 | 2026-10-04 | Not stated | None named; treat the $1 as a trial credit | Browser Use pricing |
Tugboat and Browser Use name no migration target. The only stated paid floor is Tugboat’s Intro plan at $39/month; Browser Use states none. lensdump.com’s terms are more explicit: existing free accounts keep their plan, and new accounts cannot select Free.
Upcoming-Deadline Watch List: Three Deprecations in the Next 45 Days
The timeline page flags these as upcoming, and this time the vendor pages carry the scope. Days are from October 18, 2026.
| Vendor | Aggregator flag | Deadline | Days from Oct 18 | What to do now | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| apiary.io | Deprecated (end of life) | 2026-10-31 | 13 | Convert API Blueprint files to OpenAPI; move to Apimatic, Postman, Swagger Editor, Stoplight, Redocly or Bump.sh | Oracle service changes |
| Auth0 | Deprecated (Rules and Hooks only) | 2026-11-18 | 31 | Auth0 keeps running; migrate Rules and Hooks to Actions | Auth0 deprecations and migrations |
| Anthropic API | Deprecated (Claude Sonnet 4.5 retirement) | 2026-11-30 | 43 | Move pinned calls to claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929’s replacement, claude-sonnet-5-5; the rest of the API keeps running | Anthropic model deprecations |
The scope matters more than the headline. apiary.io is end of life, not a downgrade: Oracle stops the service on 2026-10-31 and deletes remaining instances, so the job is conversion and relocation, and Oracle names the tools to move API Blueprint files to. Auth0 itself keeps running — what ends on 2026-11-18 is Rules and Hooks, read-only since November 2024, and the vendor’s own migration path is Actions. Anthropic’s date is the retirement of Claude Sonnet 4.5 (claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929) from the Claude API, deprecated 2026-09-30 with claude-sonnet-5-5 named as the replacement; the Claude API and Anthropic’s other models keep running, and Amazon Bedrock and Google Cloud set their own retirement dates. Confirm each on the vendor page before you change anything.
Q3 2026 Cuts Still in Force (and Where to Move)
These 15 Q3 cuts are still in force. Migration targets appear where the dossier provides them; otherwise the row says so and names a paid floor only where one is stated.
| Vendor | What changed | Date / range | Still free? | Migration path | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Pipedream | New signups/subscriptions for Workflows stopped; Workflows and String winding down | 2026-09-30 | No for new | Self-host n8n, or Cloudflare Workers + Queues | Pipedream Workflows docs |
| CockroachDB | Free Basic plan (50M RUs, 10 GiB/month) withdrawn from new deployments | 2026-09-15 | No for new | Neon, Supabase or Turso | CockroachDB pricing |
| codesandbox.io | VM credits removed from Free plan | 2026-09-07 | Partial | Local dev containers / Dev Containers | codesandbox-client PR #8907 |
| codehooks.io | Free API calls cut to about 1/sec and 500/day (was 60/min) | 2026-07-11 to 2026-08-28 | Yes, reduced | Cloudflare Workers free tier | codehooks.io |
| MiniMax | Paid Music and Lyrics Generation APIs closed to new users; free music tier winding down | 2026-08-20 | Winding down | Self-hosted open-weight models | MiniMax pay-as-you-go pricing |
| Basecamp | Free plan cut from up to 20 users to 5; one free project for personal use | 2026-08-16 to 2026-08-19 | Yes, reduced | None stated | Basecamp Personal |
| Google Content API for Shopping | Sunset; requests return progressive errors | 2026-08-18 | No | None stated | Google Merchant API updates |
| Algolia | Build plan replaced by Free plan with different limits (timeline effective date 2026-08-12) | 2026-08-10 to 2026-08-13 | Yes, changed | Meilisearch or Typesense self-hosted | Algolia pricing (archived Aug 2026 capture) |
| Phase Two | Free shared realms shut down 30 days after announcement | 2026-07-30 | No | Self-host Keycloak | Phase Two starter-tier launch post |
| Roboflow | Free Public plan from “$60/mo free credits” to 15 credits/month | 2026-07-30 | Yes, reduced | None stated | Roboflow pricing |
| bonsai.io | Free tier gone; lowest tier ‘Staging’ at $15/month | 2026-03-12 to 2026-07-28 | No | None stated; floor $15/month | bonsai.io pricing |
| Cloudflare Workers AI | Kimi K2.6, Kimi K2.7 Code, GLM-5.2 moved off Free plan (Workers Paid now) | 2026-07-28 | Partial | None stated; models now require Workers Paid | Cloudflare changelog |
| Exa | Free tier up to 20,000 requests/month replaced by $10 credits/month | 2026-07-17 to 2026-07-24 | Partial | None stated | Exa pricing |
| Cerebras | Free access became time- and credit-bounded trial ($5 credits, new verified accounts) | 2026-07-16 | Trial only | None stated | Cerebras change log |
| Pollinations.AI | Hourly free Pollen refill ended on all accounts | 2026-07-10 | No | None stated | pollinations PR #11928 |
The Bigger 2026 Picture: How We Got Here
The Q4 delta and Q3 list sit on top of a year of contraction. Grouped by month:
January 2026: Docker Desktop prices rose 67–80% from 2026-01-01 (Personal $7→$11, Pro $9→$14) (Docker pricing); Fly.io volume snapshots began billing $0.08/GB-month (Fly.io pricing); Atlassian Forge moved to consumption-based billing for compute and storage (Atlassian Forge pricing update); PythonAnywhere dropped the $5 Hacker plan (base $10) and new free accounts lost MySQL (PythonAnywhere blog).
February 2026: X (Twitter) API Legacy Free replaced by pay-per-use on 2026-02-06 (X developer community announcement); Spotify API dev mode now requires Premium and test users fell 25→5 on 2026-02-11 (Spotify developer portal); Brave Search API free 2,000 queries/month became $5 free credit/month (~1,000 requests) on 2026-02-12 (Brave blog); MinIO’s open-source repo was archived as no-longer-maintained on 2026-02-12 (MinIO commit); Koyeb’s free Starter was withdrawn from new users on 2026-02-26 amid the Mistral AI acquisition (Koyeb blog).
March 2026: Postman’s free plan became single-user only from 2026-03-01, with team collaboration needing the paid Team plan at about $19/user/month (Postman pricing); Firebase Cloud Storage moved to the pay-as-you-go Blaze plan on 2026-02-03 and Firebase Studio’s sunset was announced on 2026-03-19 (Firebase Studio migration docs); HCP Terraform’s legacy free plan ended on 2026-03-31 and the free tier now caps managed resources at 500 (vendor page returned HTTP 429 from this host — cite the Free Tier Tracker); odrive discontinued its free tier on 2026-03-31 (odrive pricing).
April 2026: Qwen Code’s free OAuth tier was discontinued on 2026-04-15 (Qwen Code auth docs); Amplitude’s free Starter was cut to 2M events/month on 2026-04-27 after an earlier 50K→10K MTU cut (cite the Free Tier Tracker).
June 2026: Google Gemini Code Assist stopped serving the free tier for individuals on 2026-06-18 (Gemini Code Assist deprecation docs); Burnermail removed its public Free plan on 2026-06-27 (Burnermail blog); Appwrite Cloud began deleting free projects paused 90 days (earlier: paused after 7 idle days, functions 5→2) on 2026-06-29 (Appwrite changelog 2026-06-29); Google Tenor API was deprecated/shut down on 2026-06-30, with new key sign-ups already stopped on 2026-01-13 (vendor support page 404s from this host — cite the Free Tier Tracker).
At the aggregator level, keep the records separate. The Free Tier Tracker’s high-impact cut list for January 1 – October 18, 2026 contains 14 removals, 12 cuts, and 6 deprecations or shutdowns, with a Q1 breakdown of 8 removed, 37 reduced or restructured, 6 expanded or new and 52 total Q1 changes. The Pricing Changes timeline counts 465 tracked changes overall, 65 removals, 26 upcoming, and 227 with an unknown effective date — and, for 2026 so far, 23 free tiers removed, 56 limits reduced, 13 new or increased and 39 restructured. Sasanova’s changelog tracks 148 tools and 15 changes with a +152% average increase, recording Asana’s free plan cut from 10 users to 2 and Mailchimp’s from 500 to 250 contacts. Free AI News stamps per-tool rows “Verified: 2026-07-31”. Sources: Free Tier Tracker, Pricing Changes, Sasanova pricing changelog, Free AI Tier Tracker.
The Counter-Trend: 7 Free Tiers That Grew
The previous edition lacked this section. Free tiers are not only being cut, and the same aggregators record expansions. The seven below are dated; where the vendor page does not carry the change, the source given is the Free Tier Tracker or Free AI News. None of it is permanent.
| Vendor | What grew | Date | Current free limits | Why it matters for bootstrappers | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Terragrunt Scale (Gruntwork) | New free tier launched | 2025-12-15 | Up to 25 infrastructure units; GitOps, drift detection, module-update automation | HCP Terraform alternative | Gruntwork announcement |
| Neon | Free plan: one member per org → unlimited (2026-03-13); projects 10→100 and per-project storage (restructured 2026-01-15) | 2026-03-13 | Unlimited members, 100 projects, storage per project | Team-friendly Postgres free tier | Neon changelog 2026-03-13 |
| Cloudflare Queues | Added to Workers free plan | 2026-02-04 | Queues on Workers free plan | Free event glue | Cloudflare Queues docs |
| Amazon Aurora PostgreSQL | Aurora Serverless added to AWS Free Tier | 2026-03-25 | Aurora Serverless on AWS Free Tier | Managed Postgres on free tier | AWS Aurora pricing |
| DigitalOcean | Droplets moved to per-second billing (60s / $0.01 minimum) | 2026-01-01 | Per-second billing, 60s/$0.01 minimum | Cheaper short-lived compute | Free Tier Tracker |
| Unity DevOps | Free tier expanded: storage 5x to 25 GB, 100 GB egress, per-seat charges removed | 2026-03-01 | 25 GB storage, 100 GB egress, no per-seat charges | Generous artifacts and CI storage | Free Tier Tracker |
| Gemini (consumer chat) | Daily usage caps removed on standard chat | 2026-04-30 | No daily usage caps on standard chat | Free AI chat capacity | Free AI News tracker |
Read the expansions as strategy: Neon’s unlimited members and 100 projects per org land against CockroachDB’s withdrawn free Basic plan; Cloudflare Queues on the Workers free plan makes Cloudflare a credible Pipedream replacement for low-volume glue; Terragrunt Scale exists as an HCP Terraform alternative after that legacy free plan ended. Free tiers follow vendor strategy, and strategy changes.
The Four Patterns Behind the Cuts (and How to Pick Vendors That Stay Free)
AgentDeals names four patterns behind the cuts: open-core → paid (MinIO, LocalStack, HCP Terraform); credits → hard quotas (Windsurf, Netlify, Vercel); free team → single-user (Postman, Docker Hub); and an API monetization wave (X API, Brave Search API, Xero API, Spotify API).
Their guidance: for side projects, favour vendors with a strategic reason to stay free — Cloudflare, GitHub, Grafana Cloud are the named examples. For production workloads, keep a written migration plan: that is the difference between a weekend of work and a quarter of work when a cut lands.
Migration practice that survives any cut
Generic practice, not tool-specific advice: confirm the effective date and whether existing projects are grandfathered; turn on billing alerts and a hard spend cap; export on day one rather than waiting for the shutdown email. For data, prefer the vendor’s native logical dump over CSV, note extensions such as PostGIS or pgvector plus collation and charset (they break silently on import), and test a restore, not just an export. For auth, export users with emails, verified status and metadata; password hashes are often non-portable, so budget for a forced password reset. Lower DNS TTLs about 48 hours before a cutover, and remember that webhooks, OAuth redirect URIs and API keys in CI secrets are the usual causes of a post-migration outage. Run the replacement at target load for one billing cycle before committing, and self-host only if you have the ops capacity.
How This Guide Was Built
All figures in this post come from the aggregators’ published records and the vendors’ own pricing, terms and deprecation pages, fetched on 2026-10-18. No hands-on testing was performed on any of these tools. The AgentDeals Free Tier Tracker carries the note “Reviewed 2026-09-12, corrections outstanding”, so every entry here is a lead to confirm on the vendor page before rewriting production code — which is exactly what we did for the three deadline items above.
FAQ
Did the October 11 edition already cover these cuts? No. It covered the Q1–Q3 cuts from the same aggregator; this edition leads with the October 4–18 delta, then widens to the full 2026 picture.
Are the Internet Archive ranges exact effective dates? No. Tugboat, codehooks.io, Basecamp, Algolia, bonsai.io and Exa are recorded as ranges, not single dates. Treat them as windows and confirm the current vendor page.
Why do the two AgentDeals pages show different numbers? They are different records: the Free Tier Tracker’s high-impact cut list and the Pricing Changes timeline count different things. Cite each page separately and do not merge them.
Which of the Q4 cuts has a stated paid floor? Only Tugboat, at $39/month for the Intro plan. lensdump.com lists paid tiers (Spark, Ember, Superhero, Titan and Angel) without prices in its terms, and Browser Use states none.