{
  "name": "AI Free Tier Change History",
  "description": "Append-only record of every change to the AI Free Tier Ledger: structured before/after values with dates. Wording edits appear alongside real limit changes.",
  "url": "https://getaitools.dev/changes.json",
  "license": "CC-BY-4.0 (link back to getaitools.dev)",
  "changes": [
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Perplexity",
      "category": "chat",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "~5 Pro searches / day",
      "new": "~5 Pro searches / day, a few Deep Research runs / day"
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Perplexity",
      "category": "chat",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "No Deep Research, Labs or premium model picker on the free plan.",
      "new": "No Labs or premium model picker on the free plan; Deep Research is capped to a handful of runs a day.",
      "note": "Correction: Perplexity's own Deep Research announcement says non-subscribers get a limited number of runs per day, so 'No Deep Research' was too absolute."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Cerebras",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "whats_free",
      "old": "Fastest inference around (~2,000 tokens/sec) on Llama-family models.",
      "new": "Fastest inference around (~2,000 tokens/sec) on a rotating lineup of open-weight models (Llama, Qwen, GPT-OSS)."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Cerebras",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Small model selection compared to other providers.",
      "new": "Small model lineup that rotates often: a model you rely on can disappear from the free tier."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Ideogram",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "whats_free",
      "old": "Daily credits, no watermark, best-in-class text rendering inside images. Commercial use explicitly allowed.",
      "new": "Weekly credits, no watermark, best-in-class text rendering inside images. Commercial use explicitly allowed."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Ideogram",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "10 credits/day, slow queue",
      "new": "10 slow credits/week, resets Saturday 00:00 UTC",
      "note": "Correction: Ideogram's official pricing page lists the free allowance as weekly, not daily. Flagged by a ChatGPT cross-check."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Ideogram",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Free generations are public in the community gallery.",
      "new": "Free generations are public in the community gallery, and the weekly allowance is a fraction of the old 10/day."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Google Flow (ex ImageFX / Whisk)",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "Monthly credit allowance",
      "new": "50 credits/day, no rollover; free credits cover Veo 3.1 Lite/Fast/Quality only",
      "note": "Pinned down from Google's official Flow help page (support.google.com/flow/answer/16526234)."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Stable Diffusion / Flux (local)",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Needs a GPU (8GB+ VRAM for comfort) and some setup patience. Check each model's license.",
      "new": "Needs a GPU (8GB+ VRAM for comfort) and some setup patience. Licenses differ per model: FLUX.1 schnell is Apache-2.0, FLUX.1 dev is non-commercial."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Luma Dream Machine",
      "category": "video",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "whats_free",
      "old": "Small daily credit pool in the Dream Machine app.",
      "new": "Small monthly credit pool in the Dream Machine web and iOS apps."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Luma Dream Machine",
      "category": "video",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "Roughly one short 720p clip per day, no audio",
      "new": "Monthly credits: web amount unpublished, iOS app lists 250/mo. 720p drafts, no audio",
      "note": "Correction: Luma's official pricing support page describes monthly credits, not a daily pool."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Luma Dream Machine",
      "category": "video",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Permanent watermark, non-commercial only, and unused daily credits don't roll over.",
      "new": "Permanent watermark, non-commercial only, and Luma doesn't publish the web free credit amount."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Claude",
      "category": "chat",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "Daily message cap, varies with demand",
      "new": "~15-40 msgs per 5 h session window, varies with demand",
      "note": "Wording clarification, not a Claude change: the cap is a 5-hour session window, not daily."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Gemini API",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "whats_free",
      "old": "Real ongoing free tier on most Gemini models via AI Studio, including multimodal.",
      "new": "Real ongoing free tier on Gemini Flash models via AI Studio, including multimodal."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Gemini API",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "Per model, e.g. Flash ~1,500 req/day, Pro ~50 req/day. Resets midnight PT",
      "new": "Flash only, e.g. Gemini 3 Flash ~1,500 req/day; exact per-project quotas shown in AI Studio",
      "note": "Pro models left the free tier in April 2026; Google no longer publishes exact free-tier quotas."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Gemini API",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Enabling billing on the project kills the free tier instantly. Free-tier data may be used for training.",
      "new": "Pro models were pulled from the free tier in April 2026. Enabling billing on the project kills the free tier instantly. Free-tier data may be used for training."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "OpenRouter",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "200 req/day across free models",
      "new": "50 req/day (20 req/min) across free models",
      "note": "Correction: the 200/day figure was outdated. OpenRouter's cap is 50/day without a one-time $10 credit purchase, 1,000/day with it."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Antigravity CLI",
      "category": "code",
      "type": "added",
      "field": null,
      "old": null,
      "new": "Terminal coding agent on Gemini models with a personal Google account. Successor to Gemini CLI, which Google shut down for consumer accounts on June 18, 2026.",
      "note": "Replaces the Gemini CLI row. Free quota is roughly 20 agent requests/day, shared with the Antigravity IDE."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Windsurf Free",
      "category": "code",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "~25 agent (Cascade) actions/month",
      "new": "Daily/weekly quota, ~5 agent (Cascade) actions/day",
      "note": "Correction of our earlier listing: the March 2026 quota is daily, not monthly."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Windsurf Free",
      "category": "code",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Pricing was overhauled in March 2026 (credits replaced by quotas); premium models stay gated to paid plans.",
      "new": "Pricing was overhauled in March 2026 (credits replaced by daily/weekly quotas); premium models stay gated to paid plans."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Suno",
      "category": "audio",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "No commercial use, no stem separation, shared (slower) queue.",
      "new": "No commercial use and no downloads: free songs are listen-only inside Suno since the late-2025 Warner deal. Shared (slower) queue.",
      "note": "Downloads were removed for free accounts after the late-2025 Warner licensing deal; recorded when caught."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-04",
      "service": "Gemini CLI",
      "category": "code",
      "type": "removed",
      "field": null,
      "old": "Full terminal coding agent with a personal Google account.",
      "new": null,
      "note": "Shut down by Google for consumer accounts on 2026-06-18; successor is Antigravity CLI. Flagged by a reader via the corrections form."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "Groq",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "~30 req/min, 14,400 req/day (llama-3.3-70b)",
      "new": "~30 req/min, 1,000 req/day, 100K tokens/day (llama-3.3-70b)",
      "note": "Cut happened earlier in 2026; recorded when verified."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "OpenAI API",
      "category": "api",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "whats_free",
      "old": "One-time $5 welcome credit for new accounts (discontinued mid-2025)",
      "new": "Daily free-token allowance with API data-sharing opt-in: up to ~1M tokens/day on frontier models, ~10M/day on mini models",
      "note": "Recorded when verified; the data-sharing program replaced the welcome credit."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "Google ImageFX / Whisk",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "removed",
      "field": null,
      "old": "Free Imagen-family generation with a Google account",
      "new": null,
      "note": "Shut down April 2026, folded into Google Flow."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "Google Flow",
      "category": "image",
      "type": "added",
      "field": null,
      "old": null,
      "new": "Imagen image generation and limited Veo video with a Google account, monthly credit allowance",
      "note": "Successor to ImageFX and Whisk."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "Windsurf",
      "category": "code",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "Monthly prompt-credit allowance",
      "new": "Unlimited Tab autocomplete, ~25 agent (Cascade) actions/month",
      "note": "Pricing overhauled March 2026: credits replaced by daily/weekly quotas."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "Gemini",
      "category": "chat",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "limits",
      "old": "Daily message caps, unpublished",
      "new": "Compute-based caps refreshing every 5 h with a weekly ceiling; 5 Deep Research uses/month",
      "note": "Google switched the free app plan from message counts to compute-based limits."
    },
    {
      "date": "2026-07-02",
      "service": "ChatGPT",
      "category": "chat",
      "type": "changed",
      "field": "catch",
      "old": "Limits are dynamic",
      "new": "Limits are dynamic; opting out of personalized ads can cut the free cap to as low as ~5 msgs / 3 h",
      "note": "Ads opt-out penalty verified 2026-07-02."
    }
  ]
}