There is a free cloud plan called Sandbox: 200 message credits, one workspace, one member, five apps, 50 knowledge documents and 50MB of storage. The self-hosted Community edition is also free. Paid cloud starts at Professional, $590 a year.

Not in the usual sense. The Dify Open Source License is Apache-2.0 with two additions: you cannot offer a multi-tenant SaaS built from the source without written authorisation, and you cannot remove the Dify logo or copyright notice. The claim has drawn pushback on GitHub and Hacker News.

Can it answer from my own documents?

That is the main reason to pick Dify. You upload files into a knowledge base and the app answers from them. The free Sandbox allows 50 knowledge documents and 50MB of storage.

Yes. The Community edition runs on your own servers at no licence cost, under the same two restrictions. Users report crashes under large workloads, so plan for the operational side.

Dify if you want a finished chat product with an admin interface and a hosted free tier, and can live with the licence. Langflow if you want an MIT-licensed canvas and will host and instrument it yourself.

Dify explained: pricing, limits, alternatives (2026) • SaikoDev

Good for / not for

Teams that want a chatbot answering from their own documents without assembling a retrieval pipeline by hand.
Non-technical members of a technical team: the editor is visual, and the backend, admin interface and knowledge base arrive as one product.
Trying a real retrieval app for nothing — the free Sandbox includes 200 message credits, 50 knowledge documents and 50MB of storage.
Anyone who wants the option to move the whole thing onto their own servers; the Community edition is self-hosted and free to run.

Developers who want code-level control over retrieval and agent logic rather than a visual editor.
Anyone building a multi-tenant SaaS on top of it: the licence forbids that without written authorisation from Dify.
Teams who need more than one person, or more than five apps, without paying: Sandbox allows one workspace, one member and five apps.

What it actually does

You build an app in Dify's browser editor by placing nodes on a canvas: a model, a prompt, a condition, a call out to a tool. The piece most people come for is the knowledge base. You upload documents, Dify indexes them, and the app answers from that material rather than from whatever the model absorbed in training. What you end up with is a chat app or an agent workflow that already has a backend, an admin interface and logs attached, which is the difference between Dify and a framework you would wire together yourself. There are two ways to run it. Dify's cloud starts on a free tier called Sandbox: one workspace, one member, five apps, 200 message credits, 50 knowledge documents, 50MB of storage and 30 days of log history. Professional at $590 a year raises that to 5,000 message credits a month, 50 apps and 5GB. Team at $1,590 a year gives 10,000 credits a month and 200 apps. The other way is the Community edition, which you host yourself at no licence cost, under the same restrictions.

What the free Sandbox includes

200 message credits, 1 workspace, 1 member, 5 apps, 50 knowledge documents, 50MB of storage, 3,000 trigger events a month, a 10 annotation quota and 30 days of log history.

From the vendor's docs

Pricing and free-plan limits

Free tier: $0 on Sandbox: 200 message credits, one workspace, one member, five apps and 50 knowledge documents.

Plan	Price	What you get
Sandbox (Free)	Free	The visual app editor, the knowledge base and the agent workflow builder One workspace with one member 3,000 trigger events a month Limits: 200 message credits · 5 apps · 50 knowledge documents · 50MB storage · 10 annotation quota · 30-day log history
Professional	$590/year	5,000 message credits a month 50 apps 5GB storage
Team	$1590/year	10,000 message credits a month 200 apps 20GB storage
Community (self-hosted)	Free	The full product on your own servers, at no licence cost Bounded by your own infrastructure rather than by a credit allowance Free to run, but under the Dify Open Source License, which adds two use restrictions to Apache-2.0.
Enterprise	Custom pricing	Quoted by Dify No figure is published.

Prices checked on Sep 6, 2026 against the vendor's pricing page. Plans change often — confirm before you pay.

Three honest limitations

The licence is not plain Apache-2.0. The Dify Open Source License adds two restrictions: no multi-tenant SaaS built from the source without written authorisation, and the Dify logo and copyright notice cannot be removed. The "open source" description has drawn pushback on GitHub and Hacker News.
Self-hosting the Community edition means owning the infrastructure, and users report crashes under large workloads.
The free Sandbox is a single workspace with a single member, five apps and 50 knowledge documents, so it is somewhere to evaluate Dify rather than to run anything alongside a colleague.

Alternatives

Langflow — Choose Langflow instead if you want an MIT-licensed canvas with no use restrictions and are happy to host it yourself.
Activepieces — Choose Activepieces instead if the job is connecting apps to each other rather than answering questions from documents.
n8n — Choose n8n instead if you need deeply nested branching logic and a much larger integration catalogue.

Getting started in 5 minutes

Sign up at dify.ai and start on the free Sandbox plan.
Create one app and upload the documents it should answer from; Sandbox allows 50 knowledge documents and 50MB of storage.
Test it with questions you already know the answers to, and read the logs — Sandbox keeps 30 days of them.
Spend the 200 Sandbox message credits on questions that could prove the app wrong, not on demonstrations.
When five apps or 200 message credits stop being enough, weigh Professional at $590 a year against the free self-hosted Community edition.

Dify questions

Is Dify free?: There is a free cloud plan called Sandbox: 200 message credits, one workspace, one member, five apps, 50 knowledge documents and 50MB of storage. The self-hosted Community edition is also free. Paid cloud starts at Professional, $590 a year.
Is Dify open source?: Not in the usual sense. The Dify Open Source License is Apache-2.0 with two additions: you cannot offer a multi-tenant SaaS built from the source without written authorisation, and you cannot remove the Dify logo or copyright notice. The claim has drawn pushback on GitHub and Hacker News.
Can it answer from my own documents?: That is the main reason to pick Dify. You upload files into a knowledge base and the app answers from them. The free Sandbox allows 50 knowledge documents and 50MB of storage.
Can I self-host it?: Yes. The Community edition runs on your own servers at no licence cost, under the same two restrictions. Users report crashes under large workloads, so plan for the operational side.
Dify or Langflow?: Dify if you want a finished chat product with an admin interface and a hosted free tier, and can live with the licence. Langflow if you want an MIT-licensed canvas and will host and instrument it yourself.

Sources

Research-compiled, not hands-on tested. Compiled from official docs, the vendor's pricing page and community reviews as of Sep 6, 2026. We haven't tested it hands-on yet.