What free plans of popular AI tools include (September 2026)

Most AI tools have a free plan, but "free" means very different things. Some give you a daily allowance that resets, some give a one-time bundle of credits, and a few have no free plan at all. We checked the official pricing pages on 30 September 2026. Here is what the free plans give you, grouped by the job you want done.

Chat assistants: the most generous free plans

ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini and Perplexity all have free plans that are good enough for everyday writing, questions and research. Paid plans mostly raise limits and unlock newer models. In India, Google lists its entry plan, Google AI Plus, at ₹399 a month.

When to pay: only when you keep hitting limits, or you need uploads, long documents or deep research every day.

Images: check the licence, not just the price

Canva and Ideogram have free plans. Midjourney is subscription-only, starting at $10 a month. If you will use images in ads or client work, read the tool's terms on commercial use before you rely on the free plan.

Video: small free allowances

Video costs a lot to generate, so free plans are small. Runway gives 125 one-time credits, HeyGen up to 3 videos a month, and Synthesia up to 10 minutes a month on its free Basic plan. That is enough to test a tool, not to run a channel.

Voice and music: free for trying, paid for publishing

ElevenLabs gives 10,000 credits a month free, but its commercial licence starts on the paid Starter plan. Suno gives 50 credits a day free, with no commercial rights. If you publish the audio on YouTube or in ads, budget for a paid plan.

Writing, slides and coding

Grammarly and QuillBot have free plans with word or feature limits, and both list INR prices for India. Gamma gives 400 credits when you sign up. For coding, Cursor and GitHub Copilot both have free plans with limited agent use.

A simple rule

Start free, note which limit you hit first, then pay for the one tool that removes that limit. For quick one-off jobs such as removing a background, converting a PDF or writing a title, our own free tools work without signing up.

Prices change often. Every entry in our AI tools directory shows the date we checked it and links to the official pricing page.