Free tiers got worse, not better. I tracked twelve of them.

Every few months the free plan I rely on quietly shrinks. So I opened twelve AI tools I use and compared what the free tier actually gives now versus six months ago.

The pattern is consistent: the free tier becomes a tasting spoon. More tools moved core features behind paid plans, capped daily use, or slapped watermarks on exports that used to be clean.

A few held the line. The genuinely free, open-weight image model and a couple of note tools still give real value without a card. The rest now ask for payment the moment you do something useful.

Why it matters: free was how I vetted a tool before paying. As that window closes, I am paying to discover whether a tool is bad, which is a terrible deal.

My rule now: if a tool hides its price behind a start-free that expires in a week, I assume the paid plan is the product and the free one is the ad.

None of this is a complaint about charging. It is a note to read the free tier like a contract, because it changed while you were not looking.