Pricing changelog
Vendors change pricing without telling you. Every change we catch while verifying our data lands here, dated and sourced — so you can tell which tutorials and comparison posts are already stale. Powered by the same verified data as every calculator on this site.
Permanent free tier discontinued (during 2025) — new accounts get a 60-day trial (100 emails/day), then must move to Essentials at $19.95/month.
Why it matters: Every 'SendGrid free tier' tutorial written before 2025 is now wrong. Resend (3K/mo) and Mailgun (100/day) still have permanent free lanes.
Billing metric is Monthly RETAINED Users (MRU), free to 50,000, then $0.02/MRU on Pro ($25/mo base). B2B organizations are a separate $100/mo add-on.
Why it matters: Community posts still quote the old 10K-MAU framing. Real math at 100K retained users: ~$1,025/mo — half of what older threads claim.
Source: https://clerk.com/pricing
Free allowances ended for new accounts (October 2024). Smallest machine (shared-cpu-1x 256MB) runs ~$2.02/mo, NA egress $0.02/GB.
Why it matters: Legacy blog posts still promise a Fly free tier that new signups don't get.
Moved to a credits model: free tier 300 credits/month (~15GB bandwidth equivalent at 20 credits/GB); Pro $20/mo with 3,000 credits shared across bandwidth, deploys and compute.
Why it matters: Bills are harder to predict than the old flat-bandwidth model — heavy deploying drains the same pool as traffic.
Source: https://www.netlify.com/pricing/
Cloud server prices rose ~1.3–1.4× effective 15 June 2026; CX22 (2 vCPU / 4GB / 20TB traffic) now ≈ €4.35/mo + VAT.
Why it matters: Still the price floor of the industry, but pre-June-2026 cost comparisons undershoot the real bill.
Source: https://docs.hetzner.com/general/infrastructure-and-availability/price-adjustment/
Free tier covers 25,000 MAU (no credit card); paid starts at $35/mo for only 500 MAU and bills in tier jumps (usage between tiers bills at the next tier up).
Why it matters: The free ceiling is generous but the first paid step is a cliff — budget the jump before you cross 25K.
Source: https://auth0.com/pricing
AuthKit free to 1,000,000 MAU; revenue model is per-connection enterprise SSO at $125/connection/month (volume discounts from 16+).
Why it matters: For consumer-scale apps WorkOS is effectively free auth; the bill only starts when enterprise customers demand SAML.
Source: https://workos.com/pricing
The open-source framework absorbed Auth.js (NextAuth) in early 2026; the library is free with users in YOUR database. Optional cloud dashboard: $0 starter / $20 Pro. No per-MAU billing exists.
Why it matters: Third-party articles claiming Better Auth charges $0.02/MAU are wrong — that's Clerk's rate.
Hobby (free) tier is limited to personal, non-commercial projects; Pro is $20/seat with 1TB transfer included, then $0.15/GB.
Why it matters: A revenue-generating indie app technically needs Pro from day one — few tutorials mention it.
Source: https://vercel.com/pricing