Glide Buyer's Checklist: GlideOS or Classic, Checked Before You Pay

Glide (glideapps.com) sells two products, and the first check on this list decides every other one: are you buying GlideOS or Glide Classic? GlideOS is the current product, where the Glide Agent builds internal apps from a prompt, a spreadsheet, a PDF or a screenshot, billed in credits per organization and monthly only. Glide Classic is the original no-code builder, still sold, billed per team in users and updates, monthly or yearly. They run in separate accounts and cannot share data, and Glide says it has no tool to move Classic apps into GlideOS. So choose the product first. Then budget its meter, count its people, check its data and security gates, and plan your exit before the first invoice.

Settle which Glide you are signing up for

The vendor steers new buyers toward GlideOS. Its main pricing page is the GlideOS page, while Glide Classic sits on a separate pricing page with a button labeled Start with Classic. GlideOS opened as a public beta in July 2026 and got its current plan lineup in September 2026, so it is a young product. Glide Classic carries the older feature set that most search interest still asks about: two-way Google Sheets sync, Glide Tables and Big Tables, the template gallery and the Glide API. Your answers below usually point to one product quickly.

• You want an agent to build the app, its data and its workflows from a description or a sheet: look at GlideOS.
• You need a live two-way link to a Google Sheet, or a template from the gallery: that is Glide Classic.
• You already run Classic apps: they keep working, but a GlideOS project starts from scratch.
• You expect a phone install: both products deliver web apps, not store apps.

That last point surprises people. Glide's help center says Glide Classic apps are progressive web apps added to a phone's home screen, and that direct publishing to Apple's or Google's stores is not supported. GlideOS shows a QR code on first publish for the same kind of home-screen install. Glide for iPhone has been announced as an app for building and running your business on the go, which is a different thing from listing your own app in a store.

Budget the meter each product runs on

GlideOS bills in credits, a standardized unit of the LLM tokens the Glide Agent spends. Credits pay for building, for AI features inside your apps, for workflow steps and for integration calls, pooled across the organization. GlideOS Basic costs $25 per month with 100 credits, and GlideOS Plus runs from $50 per month for 250 credits to $1,025 per month for 10,000 credits; GlideOS bills monthly, and Glide says annual plans are coming soon.^[1] Monthly credits reset each cycle and do not carry forward. When they run out, new AI requests stop until the reset or until you buy extra credits.

Forecasting is the hard part. Glide's docs say credit use per message is not reliably predictable, and the agent modes differ: Balanced uses about 3x the credits of Light, and Heavy about 5x. Workflow steps cost 0.1 credits each for the first 100 steps, falling in bands after that, and Glide's own example puts a 500-step run at 30 credits. Each integration call costs 0.01 credits. People who only use your app still draw on the pool, because the Terms say an app may consume the account's credits whenever it is used.

• Build a small version on GlideOS Free first; its credits are limited and do not renew. Workflows only run, and agent modes can only be chosen, on paid plans, so measure those on a month of GlideOS Basic.
• Read each workflow's cost page, which shows credits for the last 7 days and 24 hours plus cost per run.
• Note the top-up cap: GlideOS Basic allows 1 extra credit purchase a month, GlideOS Plus 2.
• Count builders. GlideOS Plus includes 3 team members, so a fourth builder means GlideOS Pro.

GlideOS Pro costs $125 per month for 5 team members and 500 credits, billed monthly, and each added member is $10 per month. By our arithmetic that is $50 a month more than GlideOS Plus with 500 credits at $75 per month. The difference buys two more members plus unlimited published apps and workflows, MCP access, database connection strings, 24-hour backups and human support.

Glide Classic meters users and updates instead. An update is a data change or sync from Google Sheets, Airtable or Excel, an integration run or a Glide API call; edits inside Glide Tables and Big Tables use none, apart from API writes and server-side workflows. Glide Classic Explorer includes 250 updates a month, Maker 500 and Business 5,000. Past that, a team with unlimited updates switched on pays 2¢ per update, so 1,000 extra updates come to $20 by our arithmetic. Without that switch, AI, workflows, integrations and external syncs stop at the limit. Our Glide pricing guide lays out every plan and term.

Count who builds and who only uses the app

On Glide Classic the trap is the email domain. Explorer and Maker accept personal users only, so staff signing in with company addresses push you to Glide Classic Business, which includes 30 users and charges $5 per additional user per month billed annually or $6 billed monthly. A Maker team can ask Glide to treat one email domain as personal, which is worth asking about before upgrading. Users are counted per team and only when active in the billing period. By our arithmetic, Glide Classic Business with 40 users runs $249 per month billed yearly or $309 per month billed monthly.

GlideOS works the other way round. Guests sign in with Google, Microsoft or an email code and see only the apps shared with them, never the projects or the workspace. They take no seat, although admins can invite only 10 new guests every 30 days (3 per member on Pro and Enterprise). Your cost there is team members plus the credits the apps consume, so a busy app with many guests shows up in the credit pool rather than on a seat count. Before comparing plans, split your list into builders and app users, and on Glide Classic sort the app users by email domain.

Check where the data sits and whether it syncs back

Glide Classic gates its data sources by plan. Free and Explorer get Glide Tables, Big Tables, and Google Sheets, CSV and Excel import. Maker adds two-way Google Sheets sync, Business adds Airtable and Excel sync, and Enterprise adds SQL databases, BigQuery and more. Every plan allows 25,000 spreadsheet-source rows, which Glide calls the practical upper limit of performance; Big Tables hold 25,000, 25,000, 50,000 and 100,000 rows on Free, Explorer, Maker and Business, and up to 10 million on Enterprise. One Google spreadsheet connects per app.

GlideOS copies a Google Sheet into its own database table, and later changes stay in GlideOS rather than flowing back to the sheet. It also takes Excel, CSV and ODS uploads, or tables the agent creates from a description. Teams that expect the spreadsheet to remain the source of truth should test this first. GlideOS connects to over 1,000 services, with GlideOS Free limited to one integration, premium integrations on Pro and enterprise integrations on Enterprise. Postgres-compatible connection strings come with GlideOS Pro and let outside tools read or write the GlideOS project database. The Google Sheets and data guide covers sync in depth.

• Does the sheet need to stay live? Glide Classic Maker or higher; Maker admits only personal-email app users, so staff on a company email domain need Glide Classic Business.
• Are records in Airtable or Excel on OneDrive? Glide Classic Business.
• Is the data in a SQL database? Glide Classic Enterprise adds SQL sources; on GlideOS, enterprise integrations sit on Enterprise, and Pro's connection strings only let outside tools reach the GlideOS database, not the reverse.

Run the security and compliance gates

Sign-in control sits high on both price lists. GlideOS offers single sign-on (SAML or OIDC, enforced by verified email domain) on Enterprise only. Glide Classic sells Team SSO as a paid add-on for Enterprise teams, and the docs warn that access can persist up to 24 hours after a user is removed at the identity provider. Below SSO, GlideOS puts org-level roles and invite-only projects on Pro, and project-level roles, publishing approval and audit logs on Enterprise. Glide Classic relies on Row Owners on every plan; its docs say filters and visibility conditions do not protect data.

Certification also splits by product. Glide says Glide Classic is SOC 2 Type 2 certified and SOC 2 Type 1 for GlideOS is in progress, as read in November 2026.^[2] Both products' rules prohibit HIPAA-protected health information, card and bank account numbers, and data from children under 13. Glide says it has no EU servers and no self-hosting; data sits in the United States on Google Cloud.

• Handling patient records? Glide's rules prohibit HIPAA-protected health information in apps, in both GlideOS and Glide Classic.
• Need SSO? Budget for Enterprise on either product.
• Worried about AI training? GlideOS's Privacy Policy (July 2026) says prompts and app structure may train Glide's AI, but not your data values or personal data. Glide says its Enterprise contracts state no AI training on customer data.

Plan the way out before you pay

Refund terms differ sharply. Glide Classic's pricing page promises a full refund within 14 days of the initial subscription payment. GlideOS's Terms (July 2026) say subscription fees and credit purchases are non-refundable except where the law requires, with no prorated refund for unused time.^[3] On GlideOS, the monthly term is your only hedge. Glide Classic also offers a 14-day Business trial, but it needs a card and renews into paid Business unless you cancel; see is Glide free.

Canceling GlideOS keeps plan features to the end of the cycle. After that, every invite-only project opens to everyone in the organization, members other than the canceling owner wait for a seat, and paid credits expire. Enterprise customers cancel through Sales. A canceled Glide Classic plan stays accessible to the end of the billing period, then converts to Free, and paid-plan features stop working; overages from that period are still charged. Deleting a Classic team deletes its apps with no recovery.

• GlideOS export: any project table downloads as CSV; view code and project files is listed on Enterprise only.
• Glide Classic export: Glide Tables export as CSV minus empty columns, Relation and Query columns stay behind, and Big Table exports arrive by email as CSV.
• Data kept in Google Sheets, Excel or Airtable stays in your source.
• The app itself does not move. Glide's own 2022 blog conceded that apps built in an app builder generally cannot move to another platform.

The bottom line

Run this checklist in order and the plan usually picks itself. Choose GlideOS if you want the agent to build and you can live with monthly billing, credits that resist forecasting and non-refundable fees. Choose Glide Classic if you need live Google Sheets sync, a yearly price or the 14-day refund, and sort your users by email domain before picking Maker or Business. On either product, SSO means Enterprise, HIPAA-protected health data is off the table, and no app reaches the Apple or Google stores.