Fly.io retired its free monthly allowances in October 2024

The workload

Fly.io's own discontinued-plans documentation, retrieved 16 September 2026, states the company deprecated its named Hobby, Launch and Scale plans as of 7 October 2024, while still honouring them for customers who had already purchased one. The workload fell on two groups. New customers after that date no longer received a no-cost monthly allowance by default; they instead get a one-time free trial credit, then a paid plan requiring a card on file. Existing customers on the older plans face an irreversible choice: switching to the new Pay As You Go plan means, in the page's own words, you won't be able to return to the legacy plan.

What the documents show

Verified: an archived copy of Fly.io's pricing documentation, captured 1 August 2023, states that at that time all plans included, at no charge, up to 3 shared-cpu-1x Machines with 256 MB of RAM each, 3 GB of persistent volume storage in total, and an outbound data transfer allowance. Verified: the discontinued-plans documentation states that as of 7 October 2024, new organizations instead receive a free trial credit with, in the page's words, no free allowances during the free trial, after which the organization moves automatically to a paid plan. Verified: accounts holding a legacy free plan before the change are renamed Legacy Hobby and keep their prior terms, no subscription fee and no usage beyond the original allowances, unless the holder opts into Pay As You Go.

The operating cost

Verified: for a new customer, entry cost is whatever the one-time free trial credit covers, after which usage is billed under standard Pay As You Go rates a companion entry describes, with no ongoing free allowance. Verified: for a legacy account that has not switched, the cost structure the archived 2023 page describes still applies, per the current documentation. Estimated: the dollar difference between the two arrangements depends on a workload's Machine count and transfer volume, which neither document computes as one figure.

The stop condition

The documentation states its own stop condition and it is a one-way door: choosing Pay As You Go from a legacy plan is permanent, with no path back. Editorially, the point to weigh that choice is before switching: a legacy account with usage safely inside the old allowances has no cost reason to switch, since Pay As You Go offers no discount for the same usage, only different exposure once usage grows.

• Is the account still on a legacy free plan, and if so, does its usage still fit inside the original allowances?
• For a new signup, how much of the one-time free trial credit remains, and what happens automatically once it runs out?
• Has the irreversibility of switching to Pay As You Go been weighed against any short-term benefit of switching?

The vendor's own documentation dates this change to October 2024, not to an earlier year; a founder relying on an older description of Fly.io's free tier should check the discontinued-plans page directly rather than assume the 2023-era allowances still apply to a new account.