Best offer on record: Countly Lite (Community Edition) — free self-hosted. 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Live check of “Countly Lite (Community Edition) — free self-hosted”:Confirmed
Countly Lite is confirmed as a free, open-source, self-hosted edition, described on Countly's own page as "free forever" with 20+ plugins and community (Discord/GitHub) support; Countly has dropped the "Community Edition" label, and its licensing FAQ restricts Lite to internal, non-commercial use under AGPLv3 (providing Countly as a service to customers requires a paid Enterprise license). Paid tiers are separate: Countly Flex private cloud starts at $175/month and Enterprise is custom-priced.
Countly Lite (Community Edition) — free self-hosted high confidence
Countly Lite is 'Free-Forever Product Analytics': open-source, self-hosted server (countly-server on GitHub, MongoDB+Node.js) with 20+ plugins covering core analytics (dashboards, session/event tracking, mobile/web/desktop SDKs). Official /lite page: free, no trial sign-up, no payment required; community support only (Discord/GitHub). Licensing: repo is AGPL-3.0 with a modified Section 7; README describes Lite as 'Free to use under an open-source, non-commercial license' — commercial use of your users' data effectively requires a paid Enterprise agreement. Feature gating vs paid editions: advanced/engagement capabilities (funnels, retention, drills, push at scale, A/B, cohorts, AI agent 'Cee', SSO/SLA) sit in the paid Flex/Enterprise capability bundles; SDKs are identical across editions.
Eligibility
Anyone can download and self-host; license intended for individuals, small teams, and non-commercial use. No .edu, no age/funding cap, no credit card, no stated region limits. Commercial products (e.g. tracking users of a paid app) are outside the non-commercial license.
How to claim
Download countly-server from github.com/Countly/countly-server and self-host on your own VM/container; no signup. For commercial use, contact Countly sales for an Enterprise license (custom pricing, annual).
Expiry
Free forever; no stated sunset. Enterprise split (Lite non-commercial vs commercial license) is structural, not time-limited.
Gotchas
Non-commercial license restriction is the big one: a startup's commercial app likely cannot track users on Lite. Self-hosting cost is on you (MongoDB/Node/Nginge infra, ops). No vendor support; feature set is the reduced core.
Countly Flex 14-day free trial (managed private cloud) high confidence
Flex (managed private cloud) starts at $175/month (Tier 5K = 5,000 MAUs, 5M data points/month; higher tiers up to 1M MAUs at $16,444/month on flex.countly.com pricing table). A 14-day free trial is offered on Tier 5K only (per the flex pricing table). Official Flex page states: 'You can start with a trial to explore Countly Flex and its core analytics capabilities. A credit card is required to begin the trial.' Trial includes Advanced Analytics suite (real-time analytics, event tracking, sessions, user profiles, dashboards); Adaptivity/Intelligence are paid add-on bundles. US GCP regions included; other regions carry a monthly surcharge; 6 months data retention included (longer retention is paid). Pay monthly, cancel anytime.
Eligibility
All organizations (self-serve, no stated student/startup/region restriction beyond GCP region choice). Credit card IS required to start the trial — this contradicts the official marketing FAQ's silence on the matter.
How to claim
Sign up at flex.countly.com ('Start free trial' on countly.com/flex or countly.com/pricing), add a card, create a server (tier 5K, region, cloud provider), trial lasts 14 days; then standard Flex billing applies unless cancelled.
Expiry
Trial ends after 14 days; no stated program expiry. If you go over a tier's MAU threshold, the server is locked until upgrade (per Countly support FAQ).
Gotchas
CC required (trial is not no-CC). Trial is only on the smallest tier. Data lives in Countly-managed GCP private cloud (not your infra). Add-on bundles (Intelligence from $44/mo, Adaptivity from $62/mo at Tier 5K) and region/retention surcharges stack up quickly; fully loaded Flex can be very expensive at scale.
Countly Academic Program (CAP) — institutional education license (not free, $500/yr) medium confidence
Official academic program: 'simple, fixed, non-volume based pricing ... annual fee of $500.' Grants accredited institutions a Countly Enterprise site license for instructional and non-commercial research purposes: discounted Enterprise server packages you install and supervise yourself, full SDK source code for students to examine/modify, unrestricted access to knowledge base/docs/updates, and Enterprise-grade support terms. Not a free student license and not aimed at individual students.
Eligibility
Institutions (not individuals) that grant a degree via 2-6 year programs or equivalent; technical schools offering distance education also eligible. License must be used solely for instructional/non-profit research, never commercial; hardware/VMs must be under the institution's IT supervision; Countly works only with an institution staff admin (not a student/TA); EULA signed between Countly and the institution. No .edu email requirement stated — it's an institutional agreement.
How to claim
Institution applies via countly.com/academic-program, signs a CAP EULA, pays the $500 annual fee; Countly supplies Enterprise server packages for on-prem or institution-supervised cloud install.
Expiry
Annual fee, EULA-based; license not transferable outside the institution; renew per the signed agreement. Page content verified via search snapshot of the official page today; a direct fetch bounced to a generic education-solutions page, so details are as of that snapshot.
No official Countly startup program or trial-credit program found high confidence
As of 2026-10-22 there is no published Countly startup program, no free-credits-for-startups offer, and no individual student license on countly.com. Startup options are only the general 14-day Flex trial (CC required) or the free non-commercial Lite self-host. No vendor-specific startup age/funding caps exist because no program exists.
MATERIAL 2025-2026 CHANGE (the key sunset): Countly officially removed the free Flex tier. The June 17, 2026 Countly blog post 'Countly Flex Is Evolving' states explicitly: 'we are removing the free tier from Countly Flex' along with a faster engine, capability-bundle repackaging (Adaptivity/Intelligence), and new support tiers. The 'Flex Free' tier (previously ~free for up to 500 MAUs on the managed private cloud, launched around the 2024 Flex introduction) is gone from the live pricing page (fetched 2026-10-22: only Flex from $175/mo and Enterprise custom remain, plus the free non-commercial self-hosted Lite). NOTE: several third-party comparison/coupon sites (costbench.com, toolradar.com, comparetiers.com, affiliateweapons.com) still advertise 'Flex Free $0 up to 500 MAU' and 'Flex from $40/month' as of late 2026 — that data is stale/contradicted by the official site and blog; do not rely on it. No startup-program sunset was found (none ever published on official pages). The 14-day Flex trial remains, but the official Flex page confirms a credit card is now required to start it.