Softr Buyer's Checklist: What to Check Before You Pay

Before paying for Softr, settle six questions: where your data will live, how many people will log in and from which email domains, which gated features you truly need, how many workflow actions and AI credits a month you will burn, what security and exit terms you require, and how the bill is structured. Each answer points to a plan. Prices are per workspace, not per user. Basic is $25 per month billed monthly or $19 per month billed annually. Pro, with 50 AI credits a month, is $119 per month billed monthly or $99 per month billed annually. Business is $395 per month billed monthly or $329 per month billed annually ^[1]. For portals with outside clients, the app-user count usually decides first.

Start with the data your app will sit on

Softr Databases, the built-in relational database, is available on every plan and is not held back by a third-party source's API rate limit, though the Softr Database API has its own per-token limits. Its caps rise with the tier: 5,000 records per workspace on Free, 50,000 on Basic, 500K on Pro and 1M on Business, with per-database ceilings of 1,000, 10,000, 50,000 and 200K. File storage runs 1 GB, 5 GB, 50 GB and 250 GB per workspace. Those numbers cover Softr Databases only. An external source keeps its own limits, and several sources connect only on a higher tier. Check both before you pick.

• Airtable, Google Sheets, Notion, SmartSuite and a REST API connect on every plan, Free included. A REST API source is read-only; writing back goes through the Call API action or a workflow's Call API step, both from Pro.
• ClickUp, monday.com and Supabase need Pro. HubSpot and SQL databases (PostgreSQL, MySQL, SQL Server, MariaDB) need Business. Salesforce and Snowflake need Enterprise.
• On Airtable, Airtable's own cap of 5 requests per second per base and its plan's API call allowance still apply, and Softr cannot get around them. Airtable Free allows 1,000 API calls a month.
• Notion is capped at 100,000 records per app, and more needs Enterprise. SQL, Supabase and BigQuery reach up to 10 million records per app; BigQuery is read-only.

If your data already sits in Airtable, the October 2026 import copies a whole base into Softr Databases, but it consumes your Airtable plan's API calls and stops if that limit is hit. Imported automations arrive as drafts that do nothing until you switch them on, and the import gives every record a new ID. The original base stays untouched. Our Softr databases guide walks through each source.

Count the logins by email domain

Softr separates two kinds of people. Builders work in Softr Studio: Free allows up to 3, while Basic includes 1, Pro 2 and Business 3. Extra builders cost $6, $12 or $24 per builder per month billed monthly, or $5, $10 or $20 billed annually, on Basic, Pro and Business. App users are the people who sign in to what you publish. Softr counts unique emails across every published app, so one person in three apps counts once. Deactivated users do not count. Builders can also be app users without using a slot, and anonymous visitors are not limited.

The split that trips buyers up is Team versus Client. A Team user shares a business email domain with any builder in your workspace. Everyone else is a Client user, and Gmail, Outlook and other free domains always land there, even for your own staff. Free has 5 app users in total with no split. Basic includes Team 5 + Client 5. Pro includes Team 10 + Client 50, and Business Team 30 + Client 100. The two pools are not interchangeable.

• List every expected login with its email domain, then sort the list into Team and Client.
• Basic and Free cannot buy extra users. Outgrowing either one means upgrading.
• Extra users on Pro cost $3 per Team user and $1 per Client user per month; on Business, $5 and $2. They are billed monthly even on annual plans ^[2].
• Counts are checked once a day; going over sends the owner an email and starts a 7-day grace period before prorated billing.
• Extra app users stop at a per-plan limit. Past it, new users are created but stay deactivated.
• If an extra-user payment keeps failing, every user beyond the included allowance is deactivated.
• Fewer users mid-cycle brings no refund; unused packs drop off at the next renewal.

Match your must-haves to the tier that unlocks them

Softr's comparison table puts every building block on every plan, so blocks rarely force an upgrade. Permissions, sign-in methods, branding, security and mobile do. Mark every row in this grid that you cannot launch without. The highest plan among the marked rows is your floor, and the user count from the previous step may still push you one tier higher.

The jump between the top two self-serve tiers is the expensive one. By our arithmetic, moving from Pro to Business adds $276 per month billed monthly or $230 per month billed annually, so a single Business-only item deserves scrutiny. Two traps hide in the grid. Form domain restrictions on Pro are not the same thing as domain-restricted signup on Business. And some older help pages still place the PWA on a legacy plan name; the pricing page puts it on Business.

Budget workflow actions and AI credits separately

Workflows run on every plan, metered as actions executed per month: 500 on Free, 2,500 on Basic, 10,000 on Pro and 25,000 on Business. Triggers and flow-control steps such as Wait, Branch, Filter and Bulk actions do not count. Every action inside a loop runs once per item, and some actions, sending emails among them, may use more than one execution. At the limit, workflows pause until the month renews or you upgrade. Unused actions do not roll over. Run time also matters: Free stops a run at 5 minutes, Basic at 10, and Softr's comparison table lists Unlimited from Pro.

AI credits come from one monthly pool per workspace: 5 on Free, 10 on Basic, 50 on Pro and 100 on Business. Included credits reset monthly and do not roll over. Add-on packs exist on every plan, Free included, from +$10 per month for 100 credits up to +$500 per month for 5,000, priced the same in both billing terms, and add-on credits carry over one month. When the pool hits zero, AI features pause with no overage charge while the no-code editor keeps working. Softr publishes no per-action credit price.

• Estimate actions from loop items and records processed, not from the number of workflows.
• An AI step on Softr's built-in models spends AI credits and also counts as a workflow action.
• Run your real prompts during a pilot and watch the balance in workspace settings before buying a pack.
• Softr MCP is free on every plan and spends no Softr AI credits, but a connected assistant can permanently delete records, tables and databases with no undo ^[3]. View-only tokens cannot delete.

Security, hosting and the exit door

Softr says it hosts data in the EU, in Germany, by default, and Softr Databases data sits in the AWS EU Region. Softr says it holds a SOC 2 Type II report; access to that report is an Enterprise feature, and the audit covers Softr's builder, Databases and Workflows, not the app you assemble. HIPAA questions depend on your data source. Permissions are checked on the server side, while Airtable views and Google Sheets filters are not security measures. The Terms commit to 99% availability on an annual average.

• Two-factor sign-in for app users needs Business. Builders get MFA only through Studio SSO on Enterprise; no self-serve builder 2FA is published.
• Softr does not generate an app codebase you can export: it has no code export and no self-hosting, and its Vibe Coding Block builds isolated custom components that live inside Softr. If owning the codebase matters, Softr itself points you to code-generating tools.
• Mobile means a PWA on Business or higher. Nothing ships to the App Store or Google Play on any plan, and the PWA does not work offline ^[4].
• Data leaves through table CSV or Excel downloads, the Export CSV & PDF action (Pro), user CSV exports and database snapshots, not a one-click full export.
• After termination, content, apps and personal data are deleted after eight weeks; request your data by email inside that window.

Settle the billing terms before checkout

Each workspace carries its own plan, and prices exclude tax, which is calculated at checkout from your billing country and whether you buy as a company or an individual. Annual billing is one upfront payment: $228 a year on Basic, $1,188 on Pro, $3,948 on Business. Softr labels yearly billing as two months off. By our arithmetic the annual plan saves $72 a year on Basic, $240 on Pro and $792 on Business, so Basic actually saves about 2.9 months of its monthly price. See the full Softr pricing breakdown for every add-on.

Refunds are narrow. Softr refunds in full within 14 days of the first payment on a monthly subscription and within 30 days of the first payment on a yearly one, by email to support. Renewals sit outside that window. Downgrades take effect at the next renewal, while upgrades bill extra users immediately. Cancel, and the workspace stays paid to the end of the cycle, then drops to Free, where paid-only features stop and users over the cap are deactivated.

• Self-serve plans take a credit card. Invoices, purchase orders, wire transfer and ACH are Enterprise only.
• Promo codes must be entered at checkout, not added later.
• Non-profits and education institutions get 50% off, claimed through Softr's form.
• Support: Free and Basic get email and AI chat, Pro adds live chat, Business adds priority live chat and onboarding, Enterprise adds a customer success manager and a shared Slack or Microsoft Teams channel. No phone line or response times are published.
• The free trial needs no card and can be extended once by choosing a plan.

The bottom line

Softr's bill is shaped less by features than by people and data. Sort your logins into Team and Client users first, because Basic is a hard ceiling and extra users exist only on Pro and Business. Then confirm your data source's own gate and limits, mark any Business-only must-have such as the PWA or app-user 2FA, and size workflow actions by loop items. If you need exported code, store apps or offline use, stop here: Softr offers none of them. Everyone else can test the shortlist on a trial before the first payment starts the refund clock.