What 152 free plans actually let you keep

The free plans that hand it over

This is the shortest list on the site, and it is the reason the site exists. These are the products whose own pages say a free user leaves with the thing itself — no watermark, no credit, no upgrade step.

• 2FAS

  Exports freely

  2FAS's own tutorial describes exactly what comes out: "these files, with the extension *.2fas, are essentially text files in JSON format." On encryption it is equally direct: "If you choose to export the file with a password, the data within will be encrypted and unreadable in a text editor. However, if exported without a password, the file remains unencrypted, and all data, including sensitive information like your secret keys, is readable." A plaintext export containing the raw secrets is available at no cost and at the user's option.

• Aegis Authenticator

  Exports freely

  The project's README lists "Export (plaintext or encrypted)" as a headline feature, alongside "Automatic backups of the vault to a location of your choosing." It also names the formats it can read back in: "Import from other authenticator apps: 2FAS Authenticator, Authenticator Plus, Authy, andOTP, FreeOTP, FreeOTP+, Google Authenticator, Microsoft Authenticator, Plain text, Steam, TOTP Authenticator and WinAuth (root access is required for some of these)." Export in a form a human can read, and import from ten competitors — portability is a stated feature in both directions.

• Bitwarden

  Vault exports free

  The Bitwarden export help page states supported formats are ".json (plaintext)", ".csv (plaintext)", ".json (Encrypted)", and ".zip (with attachments)", and describes the export process for the "individual vault" with no plan restriction stated anywhere on the page. The pricing page separately states the free plan gets "Unlimited devices, unlimited passwords", which covers device sync. Together: free-tier export in an interoperable format (CSV/JSON) plus free-tier multi-device sync are both vendor-stated.

• Buzzsprout

  Redirect and audio out

  Buzzsprout answers both halves, and the redirect one in an unusually direct way — the button that starts it is labelled "Redirect RSS Feed and Downgrade to the Buzzsprout Free Plan", and the article explains that "After the redirect is placed on your feed, the system will automatically set your account up to be downgraded to the free plan when your current cycle finishes." The redirect is built to keep working on a plan that costs nothing. On the audio: "To download your episode audio files, simply click the button labeled Download your audio files on the Backup page. Then we'll compress all your audio files into a zipped file and email you with a link once it's ready!" — stated with no plan condition.

• Ente Auth

  Exports freely

  Ente's FAQ answers the portability question directly: "Do you support exporting to Google Authenticator format? Yes, you can export your codes as HTML QR codes and then scan them in Google Authenticator to import them", via "Settings > Data > Export, Select 'Plain HTML', Acknowledge the security warning (this export is unencrypted)." The encrypted export is not a lock-in either — the migration docs state its "Decrypted data format" is "otpauth://totp/..., separated by a new line", which is the open standard every authenticator reads.

• EspoCRM

  Exports, no cap

  The Community edition is "a free, open-source CRM you host on your own server" with "No per-user fees", and the export documentation states that export supports "XLSX (Spreadsheet) and CSV formats". Nothing on that page attaches a plan or edition condition to it. Note the shape of that evidence: this is an absence of a restriction rather than a stated permission, which is weaker than a pricing table with a checkmark in the free column. Two limits are real and stated elsewhere — the free path is self-hosted only, there being no free Cloud tier, and an administrator can switch export off per role, so a given instance may not permit it regardless of the edition.

• Excalidraw

  Yours, exportable

  The free tier lists "Export to .png, .svg or 'save to file'" with no count attached, and the app is open source with drawings held "E2EE locally in your browser". What the free tier caps is the hosted side — "1 infinite scene" — not the files you save. As with local upscalers, there is no server step at which an export could be marked or metered.

• Fathom Analytics

  Kept, and exportable

  Fathom sells the thing the others ration, and names the competition while doing it: "Forever data retention — 2, 4 or 8 years? How about forever! While you're a customer, your full analytics history stays available." Export is not tiered either — "Unlimited email reports and exports — Schedule email reports and export your data whenever you need it" — and the FAQ says cancelling comes "with a complete data export." The caveat is in Fathom's own sentence and belongs in the verdict: forever lasts "while you're a customer." There is no free plan, so this is the cheapest-plan case at $15 a month.

• GitHub Codespaces

  Quantified, code exits

  Both halves are answered and neither is hedged. The allowance: "GitHub will provide users in the free plan 120 core hours or 60 hours of run time on a 2 core codespace, plus 15 GB of storage each month." The exit: a codespace is a checkout of your repository, and the docs state "You can perform all the Git actions you need directly within your codespace", commit and push included, with no plan condition attached.

• Gmail

  Client access included

  Gmail removed the ability to turn IMAP off. Google's help article: "Starting January 2025, the option to choose 'Enable IMAP' or 'Disable IMAP' won't be available. IMAP access is always turned on in Gmail, and your current connections to other email clients aren't affected." That applies to free personal accounts. The provider people most often name when they talk about lock-in is the only one here where the door cannot even be closed.

• Google Forms

  Uncapped, unbranded

  Google's own Docs Editors help answers the export half step by step: "Download all responses as a CSV file — Open a form in Google Forms. At the top of the form, click Responses. Click More, Download responses (.csv)", alongside "View all responses in a spreadsheet" via "Link to Sheets". No plan is named because the consumer product has none. On the cap half, no Google page we read publishes a response limit for Forms at all.

• KeePassXC

  Vault exports free

  The User Guide's "Exporting Databases" section states: "KeePassXC supports multiple ways to export your database for transfer to another program... CSV export... XML export... HTML export," each with stated limitations (e.g. "the CSV export does not support attachments, advanced attributes, Auto-Type settings, or custom icons"). There is no payment tier at all, so nothing is gated. The vault itself is a local .kdbx file the user already owns and controls, and it can additionally be exported to CSV/XML/HTML for use in another program. KeePassXC has no built-in cross-device sync — the site frames the file as portable to "any location, including private and public cloud solutions" that the user sets up themselves.

• Kimai

  Data file, no seat cap

  Kimai's own features page states "Timesheet data can be exported and shared with in XLSX, PDF, CSV and HTML format" and that "each installation supports unlimited users." Since the self-hosted software is AGPL-3.0 licensed and free of vendor license fees (confirmed via github.com/kimai/kimai's own LICENSE file), export to CSV/Excel/PDF is available with no vendor-stated seat cap — you only pay if you opt into the vendor's separate paid Kimai Cloud hosting.

• MateCat

  Unlimited documents

  The homepage states it without a tier attached: "Matecat offers a powerful solution that's completely free… It provides unlimited access to all its features, with no restrictions on the number of users or projects." Whole-document translation and download carry no published cap, and there is no plan above this one to upgrade to.

• Netlify

  Stops, no charge

  Netlify answers the question in one unhedged sentence: "The free plan is always free, with hard monthly limits that cannot be exceeded or incur any costs." The mechanism is stated too: "When a site reaches its monthly usage limits, it enters a paused state until the start of the next billing cycle. We'll notify you by email and in-app as you approach your limits at 50%, 75%, and 100% of usage." One detail in that same answer is worth reading twice: "Please note that if one project exceeds its limits, all projects on your account will be paused." Billing risk sits on the paid plans instead, through an opt-in: paid plans "have spend control using the auto recharge setting for credits, which automatically refills your credit balance in small increments".

• Obsidian

  Local files, yours

  There is no export step because there is nothing to export from: "Obsidian stores your notes locally as plain text Markdown files", and "Obsidian uses open file formats, so you're never locked in. You own your data for the long term." The working format and the archive format are the same file. The paid add-ons move those files between devices or onto the web; none of them stands between you and the text.

• Otter.ai

  Full export

  Otter's own plan table lists export formats as "mp3, txt" for Basic and Pro, and "mp3, txt, pdf, docx, srt; bulk export" for Business. A plain-text file of the full transcript is therefore something a free account can walk out with — caption and Word files are not.

• PDF24

  Clean, no stated cap

  PDF24 states it outright: "There are no artificial limits at PDF24. Thanks to our scalable infrastructure, we can make everything that the PDF24 tools can do available to users." It is the only product on this page whose own text answers the how-many question with a number-free but unambiguous none.

• Photopea

  Export without condition

  The answer to whether the work leaves in a form another tool can open is unusually direct here: "Photopea fully supports a popular PSD format, both opening and saving files. It is the main format of Photopea." Beyond that it lists "PNG, JPG, GIF, BMP, WEBP, SVG, PDF, AI, AVIF, DDS, HEIC, TIFF, MP4, TGA, CDR, PDN, EPS, INDD, Figma and 40 other formats." No paid tier, watermark or export restriction appears on the homepage, the API page or the learn page, and /premium/, /donate/ and /pricing/ all return 404 — so there is no pricing page on which a restriction could be documented.

• Proton Pass

  Vault exports free

  The pricing page's plan-comparison table marks "Automatic sync across all devices" as "Included" for Proton Free specifically (same row, same status as all paid tiers). The separate export support article states you can export via "our browser extensions, web app, and Windows app" (not mobile) as "A ZIP file containing a PGP-encrypted JSON file", "An unencrypted ZIP file", or "A CSV file", and does not state any plan restriction. Together, free-tier sync plus an unencrypted CSV/JSON export path satisfy the axis.

• Shopify Logo Maker

  Vector, free

  The page states both halves of the answer: "Download high-resolution PNG and SVG files ready to use on social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, Pinterest, YouTube, and LinkedIn", and "The logo you design with Shopify's logo creator is 100% free and yours to own." A free user leaves with a vector file, which is the thing the rest of this category charges for.

• Spotify for Creators

  Redirect and audio out

  Spotify documents both legs and charges for neither, because the product is free. The redirect article walks through signing up elsewhere, importing episodes, then setting the redirect in Settings, and says to "Allow up to seven days for the redirect to take effect". The download article states the feature is "available to shows hosted with Spotify but not to shows hosted somewhere else", with full episodes downloadable from the three-dot menu and individual segments under Settings > Your recordings. Both carry the same platform restriction, stated plainly: "You can only download episodes and audio files on the web version of Spotify for Creators", and "It's not possible to redirect your feed from the Spotify for Creators mobile app."

• Substack

  No cap, exportable

  Substack's help centre answers both halves. On the list: "To export your email list on Substack, head to your Subscribers page and scroll down to 'All subscribers'", and its data-privacy article states that "Publishers have the ability to export these reader/subscription lists at any time". On the cap: there is none published anywhere — "No platform fees, no tiers, no contracts—Substack is free to start and free to leave." We read these on the help centre's own search results, which a plain HTTP request is refused.

• Upscayl

  Full size, unmarked

  The homepage states "Free and Open Source. We ❤️ open source. Download once, forever yours." The desktop app runs on your own hardware with no account and no credit system, so there is no server in the loop to stamp, shrink or count the output — the upscaled file is written to your disk at full size.

What vendors never say

These 8 products publish detailed free-plan limits — minutes, credits, seats, storage — and no answer at all to the question of what leaves with you. We record the silence rather than filling it, because a plausible guess in this column would be indistinguishable from the guesses on every other site.

• Adobe Express

  We could not read this vendor's pages at all, and we tried again. adobe.com/products/express/pricing.html, adobe.com/express/, adobe.com/express/pricing, adobe.com/express/feature/image/remove-background, helpx.adobe.com/express/using/remove-background.html and helpx.adobe.com/express/kb/express-plans.html all fail from here — timing out with zero bytes or dropping the HTTP/2 stream mid-response — over both HTTP/2 and HTTP/1.1, with a browser user agent, and IPv4-forced. Only the live editor shell at express.adobe.com responds, and it fetches prices client-side rather than publishing them. No Wayback snapshot of that pricing URL exists either. Rather than source Adobe from somewhere that is not Adobe, we publish the gap.

• Cloudflare Pages

• Freshsales

• Luma AI (Dream Machine)

  We rendered the pricing page in a full browser to be sure, and it lists Plus, Pro and Ultra with no $0 plan of any kind; lumalabs.ai/dream-machine/pricing now resolves to that same page. Its metadata mentions "free trial credits" without naming a credit amount, resolution or watermark policy, while the terms describe free-use output as usable "only for your internal evaluation and testing" and reserve the right to "embed watermarks, content credentials, provenance metadata, or other identifying information" without saying when. A trial that is never described is not a free tier we can judge.

• Stripe Invoicing

• Submagic

  The pricing page confirms half the question — the free plan carries a "Submagic watermark" while every paid tier says "No Watermark". The other half has no answer on any Submagic surface we could reach. Neither the pricing page nor the homepage mentions .srt, .vtt or a standalone caption file, /faq, /help and /features all return 404, and its API documentation — the one place Submagic documents an export at all — describes rendering the finished video rather than producing a caption file. We cannot say whether the subtitle file downloads, so we do not.

• Vidyard

  The Free row for "Video Recording" reads "5 videos per-month" with a "Video Recording Length" of "Up to 30 minutes", and the same table marks "Video Hosting" as "Not Included" for Free while checking it for every paid tier. Neither the word download nor export appears on the pricing page in connection with saving a file, and searches of Vidyard's own knowledge base for "download video" and "download original file" returned only an Outlook thumbnail article and a guide to replacing a video. The question goes unanswered on Vidyard's own pages.

• Zight

  The free Share plan is capped at "Recording Length" "5 minutes" and "Storage" "1 GB". The only download-related row in the comparison table is "Customize Visible Actions (Download button, comments, reactions, etc.)", checked for Collaborate and Scale — a control over what viewers see, not over whether you can export. We also searched Zight's own help centre for "download" and "download video": the only results were installing the app by MDM and collecting recordings from customers. The question is not answered anywhere we could find on Zight's site.

Products whose prices we could not read

A separate kind of blank. These 21 products have paid plans and did not show us a single dollar figure — the page priced in the local currency of wherever it was served, or rendered its price cells empty. We do not convert currencies and we do not copy a number from elsewhere, so the price column stays em-dashed and says why.

• Adobe Express
• Bigjpg
• Brandmark
• Canva
• ChatGPT
• DocuSign
• Filen
• Gemini
• GitHub Codespaces
• Google Analytics 4
• LanguageTool
• LogoAI
• Looka
• remove.bg
• Smallpdf
• Smartcat
• Soundraw
• Stripe Invoicing
• Substack
• Tuta
• Wix

How to read this page

Every count here rests on a sentence from a vendor's own pricing page, terms or help documentation, quoted and dated in the review it came from. None of it rests on a hands-on test yet: the distinction between what we read and what we ran is kept in the data itself and stated on every verdict. The full procedure, including what would change a verdict from read to run, is on the methodology page.

The numbers move when the data moves. If a vendor rewrites a plan table tomorrow and we re-read it, this page reflects that on the next build without anyone editing a sentence here.