"Free" on an AI tool's pricing page can mean very different things. Some free plans are genuinely usable every day, some are a one-off taste, and some let you create but not keep what you made. Knowing which kind you are looking at saves a lot of sign-ups.
The examples below come from each vendor's published plans as of October 2026. Free tiers change often, so treat the numbers as a snapshot and check the pricing page before you commit.
1. Daily allowances that reset
These give you a small amount every day. Unused credit usually disappears instead of carrying over.
- Leonardo.ai: 150 tokens a day, reset every 24 hours, with no rollover. Enough for a few dozen basic images.
- Lovable: 5 credits a day, capped at 30 a month, for building apps by chat.
- Reve: a daily image-generation allowance on free accounts, plus a sign-up bonus.
Good for: steady, light use. If you need a lot on one day, you will hit the cap.
2. One-time credits
You get a block of credits when you sign up and nothing more until you pay.
- Taskade: unlimited projects, AI chat and basic agents, plus a one-time grant of 3,000 AI credits for its heavier features.
- Superscale: 1,000 credits to try the ad agent, no card needed.
- Hailuo: welcome credits for video generation.
Good for: testing whether a tool fits before paying. Not good for regular use.
3. Monthly caps
A fixed amount each month.
- Mem: 25 notes, 25 chat messages and 25 PDF pages a month on the free plan.
- Softr: apps for up to 10 users on the free plan.
Good for: personal projects that stay small.
4. Create for free, pay to keep
The trap that catches most people: you can make as much as you like, but downloading or using the result commercially costs money.
- Soundraw: unlimited music generation and preview on the free plan, but downloads and the commercial licence need a paid plan.
Good for: trying ideas. Check the export and licence terms before you spend an afternoon on it.
5. Free with limits, no paid consumer tier
- DeepSeek: the chat app is free; the paid part is the developer API.
- Mistral's Le Chat: free with daily limits, with a Pro plan for heavier use.
6. Genuinely free and open source
No credits at all, because the software runs on your own hardware.
- Ollama, GPT4All, AnythingLLM for running language models locally.
- ComfyUI and WebUI Forge for image generation.
The cost here is your time and hardware: you need a capable computer, and setup takes longer than a website sign-up.
7. No free plan, only a trial
- Jasper: a 7-day trial of the Pro plan that needs a card.
- Scite: a 7-day trial, no permanent free tier.
- Designrr, Magnific, Topaz Video: paid only.
If a trial needs a card, set a reminder for the day before it ends.
A quick checklist before you sign up
- Does the allowance reset daily or monthly, or is it one-time?
- Can you download and use the output commercially on the free plan?
- Is there a watermark or lower resolution on free exports?
- Does the trial need a card, and does it convert to paid automatically?
- Where does your data go, especially for documents and meeting audio?
You can filter the directory to free AI tools to see tools with a free tier in each category.