Is Replit Free? Starter Plan, Free Mode and the 30-Day App Limit

Yes. Replit has a free plan called Starter, priced at $0 with no time limit, and there is no time-limited trial of Core or Pro.^[1] Starter gives you a daily Agent allowance, Free Mode, the Lite build experience, nearly all of Replit Design and one published app. That app has a catch. Its link goes down after 30 days unless you publish it again. Starter is the right place to learn, test an idea or show a prototype; a project that needs to stay online on your own domain belongs on Core.

Inside the Starter allowance

Starter does not appear on Replit's pricing page; its rules live in the billing docs. A free account receives daily Agent credits that reset each day up to a monthly cap, plus monthly cloud credits that cover production databases, object storage and publishing on Autoscale or Static.^[2] The Usage page in Settings shows how much is left and when it refreshes, so check it before a long session. Treat the allowance as an experiment budget. It runs out. When it does, you wait for the next reset (daily for Agent credits until the monthly cap, monthly for cloud credits) or upgrade.

Building happens in Free Mode, which for Starter replaces the experience Replit used to call Lite. Free Mode always routes your request to a model on its own; you cannot pick one. Starter is limited to Lite build, which Replit describes as a fast build experience for quick edits and targeted changes. Full build requires Core or Pro. That limit is real. Free Mode can still create and iterate on complete apps, so a free account can produce a working web app, but expect it to grow through many small, targeted requests.

Replit Design works almost entirely on Starter. You can start a design from a prompt, a template, a Figma file, a website URL or a screenshot, then preview frames at mobile, tablet and desktop sizes. The one exception is turning a design frame into a new app with a backend, which needs Core. Mobile is open too: you can start a mobile app and preview it on your phone through Expo Go with a free account, while simulator previews need Core. App Store publishing needs your own Apple Developer account, Google Play publishing is not supported yet, and our mobile app guide covers the steps.

Several managed pieces come with the free tier. Every app can use Replit Database, App Storage and built-in sign-in, though the production database is capped at 1 GiB on Starter against 100 GiB on paid plans. Free accounts can keep apps private, and since May 2026 Starter can publish privately or behind a password. Package Firewall and Level 1 dependency checks run for every builder. Replit says each customer, even on the free tier, gets an isolated Google Cloud project for its data.

One published app, on a 30-day clock

Publishing is available on every plan, but Starter allows exactly one published app, built with Lite build or Design Canvas. The published link goes down automatically after 30 days, and you can publish it again to bring it back. Free accounts publish to the North America region only. That makes a Starter app good for a demo link sent to a client, a class project or a test with a few friends. It is a poor fit for anything people bookmark and return to.

Every Starter app shows a Made with Replit badge carrying your referral link. Referral credits are earned only when someone you referred signs up and you upgrade to a paid plan, so the badge pays nothing while you stay free. Removing the badge requires Core. So does a custom domain, which matters more than it sounds: the free replit.app subdomain may change after you unpublish, and a custom domain is the permanent fix. Our hosting guide explains the deployment types behind that link.

Where Starter stops and Core takes over

The table leaves out a few smaller gates that also sit at Core: data visualization artifacts, Routines, SSH from a local editor, uptime checks, the SEO Agent and Agent security scans. Plan Mode is the one most builders miss, because it lets Agent read the project and propose a plan before touching any files. The Stripe integration is Core too. On the free plan, Agent can still reach Google services if you create a Google OAuth project yourself and paste its credentials into Secrets, which works but takes setup.

Free Mode is an allowance, not a plan

Free Mode is no-cost Agent work included with Starter, Core and Pro. It is not a separate free plan, and Enterprise workspaces do not get it; they use a single Auto mode instead.^[3] On Core and Pro the allowance resets every five hours and has a weekly limit, while Starter keeps its own limits. The Core card promises up to 30 hours of chat and up to 60 projects on Free Mode. Pro says only that it offers even more. Replit's launch post in August 2026 said Free Mode ran on OpenAI GPT-5.6 Luna.

The useful detail is what happens at the edge. When a request needs more than Free Mode can give, Replit asks for confirmation before any paid action starts, and the paid step covers that one request before Agent returns to Free Mode. Starter cannot take that step at all: Power and Max require an upgrade first. So a free account will not drift into paid Agent work by accident. On Core, though, saying yes spends your monthly credits, and Plan Mode is billed as well.

No trial, so the first paid step is Core

Replit offers no trial of Core or Pro, so testing Core means paying for it. Core costs $20 per month billed monthly or $18 per month billed annually, and either way it includes $20 of usage credits each month.^[4] Those credits are dollars spent on Agent, publishing, databases and AI Integrations; they reset on your renewal date and do not roll over on Core. Pro starts at $100 per month, billed monthly. Replit's monthly credits cover Agent, hosting and databases, and usage beyond them is billed pay-as-you-go unless you set a budget, a hard cap that temporarily suspends all usage-based services, hosting and databases included, as our pricing guide explains.

The Terms of Service allow full refunds of Starter and Core subscription payments made within 30 days of purchase, while Pro refunds are handled case by case by Support and usage, Agent and domain charges are never refunded. That gives a first Core month some cover, but not the usage you burn through. Upgrades take effect immediately. If you cancel, you keep Core features until the billing period ends and then fall back to Starter. Published apps may then go offline, custom domain connections are removed and storage shrinks.

Keeping a free account alive

Starter has no expiry date, but an idle account does. Replit treats an account with no login for one year as inactive, and it may terminate an inactive free account and delete its data and apps. Paid accounts are exempt from that rule. Log in once a year and the problem disappears. Deleted apps also sit in the trash for 30 days before they become unrecoverable, which gives you a short window to undo a mistake on any plan.

Free use fits three situations well. Learners can build small course projects at no cost. Founders can find out whether Agent understands their idea before spending anything. Designers can mock up screens across devices at no cost. The moment an app needs a permanent address, a second builder, payments through Stripe or a connector to a business tool, Starter has done its job and Core is the next step.

The bottom line

Replit is free in a real but narrow sense. Starter costs $0, has no time limit and lets Agent build and publish one app, which is enough to judge whether Replit's way of building suits you. The limits are deliberate: Lite build only, a link that goes down after 30 days, a badge, no custom domain and no collaborators. Since no trial of Core or Pro exists, use Starter as your trial, watch the Usage page, and upgrade to Core only when an app has to stay online.