Every AI tool advertises a free plan, and almost every free plan advertises less than it delivers in practice. The marketing page says “free forever”; the usage cap says otherwise halfway through your second task. This index is our running answer to one question: if you spend exactly $0, what can you actually get done this month?
We built it while testing tools for our click-by-click guides, then verified each row against the vendor’s own pricing page. It is deliberately approximate where vendors are approximate, and exact where they publish exact numbers. When a tool’s free plan is genuinely enough, we say so; when it is a trial wearing a costume, we say that too.
The index
| Tool | Free plan | Rough limit (Nov 2026) | $0 is enough for | You must pay when | Official |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT (our guide) | Yes — GPT-5.1 access with usage caps | ~10–15 messages per ~5-hour window, varies with server load | Drafting emails, homework help, one-off questions | You need sustained daily volume, file analysis or image generation at will | pricing |
| Claude (our guide) | Yes — current model with message caps | ~20–40 messages per ~5-hour rolling window | Long-document summarising, careful writing and editing | You work inside Claude all day or need large context at volume | pricing |
| Gemini | Yes — generous free tier in the app and AI Studio | Effectively daily-use comfortable; deep-research runs capped | Research with sources, drafts tied to Google apps | You need the biggest context window or 24/7 deep research | pricing |
| Perplexity (our guide) | Yes — unlimited quick searches | ~5 Pro (deep) searches per day | Cited answers and quick research lookups | You rely on Pro search modes or file uploads all day | pricing |
| GitHub Copilot (our guide) | Yes — a real free tier, not a trial | ~2,000 code completions + ~50 chat requests per month | Weekend projects, students, occasional coding help | Copilot is open in your editor eight hours a day | pricing |
| Canva (Magic Studio) (our guide) | Yes — free design suite with limited AI credits | ~50 lifetime Magic Media uses on the free plan | Social posts, resumes, posters done occasionally | AI features become a weekly part of your workflow | pricing |
| CapCut (our guide) | Yes — the editor is free with export limits | Free exports work; some AI effects and higher exports are Pro | Short-form video edits for socials | You need watermark-free 4K, advanced AI effects or commercial fonts | pricing |
| Notion AI (our guide) | Not really — AI is a paid add-on | No meaningful free AI tier; add-on ~$10 per member per month | — (workspace itself is free; AI costs extra) | Immediately, if AI writing inside Notion is the goal | pricing |
| ElevenLabs (our guide) | Yes — monthly credit allowance | ~10,000 credits/month ≈ 10 minutes of text-to-speech | Testing voices, one short voiceover per month | You publish voiceovers regularly (Starter ~$5 is the cheapest real fix) | pricing |
| Runway (our guide) | Yes — one-time credit grant | ~125 credits that do not refresh monthly | Learning the interface, one short text-to-video experiment | The grant runs out — generation credits go fast | pricing |
| Grammarly (our guide) | Yes — core grammar and spelling | Unlimited basic corrections; tone and rewrites are Premium | Clean grammar in emails and assignments | You need full-sentence rewrites, tone control or plagiarism checks | pricing |
| Midjourney (our guide) | No — free trials opened rarely, if ever | $0 gets you nothing; Basic is ~$10/month | — | You want it at all — there is no meaningful free path | pricing |
“~” marks an observed range, not a vendor-published number. Official pricing pages are linked per row and are the source of truth on the day anything changes.
How we compiled it
Three sources, in order of authority. First, each tool’s own pricing or help-centre page (linked in every row). Second, hands-on use: we write step-by-step tutorials for ten of these twelve tools, and the caps in the table match what the interface actually showed us while testing. Third, vendor changelogs and announcements, because AI plans move fast — Copilot’s free tier, for instance, appeared overnight in late 2024 and made every older “Copilot is paid-only” article wrong.
What we deliberately did not do: scrape comparison sites. Aggregated limit tables circulate for months after they expire. If a figure here contradicts a blog you read last spring, trust the official page — and tell us so we can fix the row.
Five ways to stretch a $0 AI budget
- Match the tool to the task, not the hype. Grammarly free handles unlimited basic corrections; spending a daily ChatGPT message on comma checks burns a scarce cap on a free-solved problem.
- Draft on free, decide on paid. Generate ten voice samples on ElevenLabs’ monthly credits, listen, then pay only in the month you actually publish.
- Stack non-competing free tiers. Perplexity for research, Gemini for drafting, CapCut for video — three free plans cover a full content workflow because none of them ration the same thing.
- Buy the $5–10 tier before the $20 flagship. The wall you hit is usually narrow; Starter plans exist precisely to clear it.
- Re-check before you subscribe monthly. Vendors move limits quietly. Our free-plan math posts track the changes that matter to beginners.
Frequently asked questions
How current are these limits?
The index was compiled in November 2026 from each tool's own pricing and help pages, cross-checked against hands-on use while writing our guides. AI tool limits change without notice — sometimes monthly. Every row links the official pricing page, which always beats any third-party table (including ours) the day a vendor changes something.
Why approximate numbers instead of exact ones?
Because several vendors deliberately publish ranges rather than fixed numbers. ChatGPT's free message cap, for example, flexes with server load, and Claude describes its window in hours rather than messages. Where a vendor publishes an exact figure — Copilot's 2,000 monthly completions, ElevenLabs' 10,000 credits — we say so; where it does not, we give the range we actually observed rather than inventing precision.
Which free plans are genuinely usable long-term?
Perplexity (unlimited quick searches), Grammarly (unlimited basic corrections), Gemini's app tier and CapCut's editor are real working free plans you can keep for months. ChatGPT, Claude and Copilot free tiers are honest but rationed — fine until a tool becomes part of your daily job. Runway and Canva's AI credits are trial-shaped: enough to learn and finish one project, not enough to run one.
What is the cheapest realistic upgrade path?
Start with the $5–10 tier of the one tool you actually hit a wall in, not the $20 flagship. ElevenLabs Starter at ~$5, Copilot Pro at ~$10 and Midjourney Basic at ~$10 each unlock the specific thing free plans ration. Most people need one paid tool, not five — pick by the wall you hit this month, not by feature lists.
Can I use or republish this table?
Yes. Writers, teachers and newsletter authors may quote the table with a visible credit line linking to https://ailarn.com/insights — no permission needed. Bloggers and journalists: cite the row you use, not the whole table wholesale; we would rather be cited accurately than copied entirely.
Cite this index
This page is written to be quoted. Teachers may use it in class materials, newsletter writers may cite rows with a link, and bloggers may reference it with a visible credit to ailarn.com/insights. If you spot a limit that has changed, the fastest fix is our corrections form — reader corrections ship within one update cycle. For how we test and what we accept, read the editorial policy.