Best offer on record: Basic (Cloud) free plan. 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Basic (Cloud) free plan high confidence
$0 per user per month ($0 per user per year). Includes unlimited storage, templates and folders; indefinite document retention; 10 field types; no cap on documents signed (FAQ: no limits on the number of documents you can sign on Free or Pro). Hard cap: 10 signature-request emails per month (FAQ: 'you can send up to 10 emails per month via Email'). Uploads up to 100 MB per file (home page). Not included on Basic: API, webhooks, SSO, bulk send, automated reminders, conditional/formula fields, Zapier.
Eligibility
Any individual or business that creates an account. The pricing and FAQ pages state no .edu or student-status requirement, no startup age or funding cap, and no region restriction. No seat cap is stated for the free plan.
How to claim
1) Open https://www.docuseal.com/pricing. 2) Click 'Create Free Account' under Basic. The sign-up page /sign_up returned HTTP 500 when fetched, so the exact signup steps and any card prompt were not verified.
Expiry
No expiry or renewal stated. Home page tagline: 'Free forever for individuals, extensible for businesses and developers.'
Gotchas
Free plan, not a trial: no trial period or credits. The 10-email cap is the binding limit for anyone sending contracts. Payment collection carries a 4% processing fee. No API on the free plan, so integrations need the free test-only Developer Sandbox or Pro ($20 per user per month). Credit-card requirement is not stated on the pricing page and was not verified at signup. The 'free forever' marketing sits next to the 10-email cap, so trust the pricing table for limits.
Open Source self-hosted edition (AGPL-3.0) high confidence
Free. On-premises page: 'Free Forever without any limitations' and 'DocuSeal allows you to self-host the platform on your own servers for free.' Pricing table: unlimited signature-request emails, storage and templates; the 10-email cap does not apply on-prem (FAQ); a 'Free Basic' API tier (endpoint list and limits not stated); self-signed certificate; no automated reminders, payments or SSO. Pro features (SSO/SAML, automated reminders, bulk send with CSV/XLSX import, conditional fields and formulas, payments, webhooks, PDF/DOCX/HTML template APIs, white-label logo, user roles, SMS verification, embedded form builder) need Pro at $240 per user per year ($20 per user per month billed annually). Server sizing for 10,000 signed documents: 1 vCPU and 1 GB RAM (smallest scenario) up to 2 vCPU and 4 GB RAM (100 MB files); disk 6 GB to 4,500 GB; PostgreSQL recommended at 1,000+ documents per year.
Eligibility
Anyone who runs their own server. No student, startup or nonprofit eligibility rules are stated on the on-premises page or the pricing table. License: AGPL-3.0 with Section 7(b) additional terms, per the GitHub README.
How to claim
1) Get the code at https://github.com/docusealco/docuseal. 2) Run the Docker image docuseal/docuseal (port 3000, per the README) on your own server, or use the Heroku, Railway, DigitalOcean or Render deploy buttons in the README. 3) Point it at your own SMTP server (the open-source edition lists 'Own SMTP for emails'). 4) For 1,000+ documents per year, use PostgreSQL (server requirements page).
Expiry
None stated. AGPL-3.0 carries no time limit. Pro is a separate per-user yearly subscription.
Gotchas
Your own costs: server, storage, SMTP provider and TLS certificate (the requirements page does not cover SMTP or TLS). The self-signed certificate means signed PDFs are not backed by a commercial trust certificate. The 'without any limitations' marketing line conflicts with the feature gating in the pricing table; trust the table. No payment collection on this edition. AGPL-3.0 section 13 requires offering modified source to users who interact with a modified version over a network. The additional terms require keeping DocuSeal attribution in interactive user interfaces; this came from a summarizing fetch (medium confidence), so read LICENSE_ADDITIONAL_TERMS in full before rebranding or redistributing.
Developer Sandbox (cloud API and Embedding, test use) high confidence
$0 per document. Pricing table: 'Sandbox: $0/document, free unlimited for testing' and 'Free unlimited API and Embedding for development and testing.' The API FAQ says eight endpoints (/templates/pdf, /templates/docx, /templates/html, /templates/merge, /templates/{id}/documents, /submissions/pdf, /submissions/docx, /submissions/html) are 'available exclusively with a Pro subscription or free Developer Sandbox in the Cloud'. Production API is pay-as-you-go on Pro: $0.20 per document or completion; every completed API document is billable on Pro.
Eligibility
Any cloud account holder building an integration. No startup, student or region gate is stated.
How to claim
1) Create a cloud account at https://www.docuseal.com. 2) Use the Developer Sandbox for API and Embedding calls during development. The key or mode activation steps were not verified; the docs page https://www.docuseal.com/resources/use-test-mode exists but was not read. 3) For production, subscribe to Pro.
Expiry
No expiry or sandbox usage cap stated beyond 'unlimited'.
Gotchas
Test use only. Production calls require Pro ($20 per user per month, or $200 per user per year on cloud) plus $0.20 per completed document. Pro is priced per user, so every developer seat is billed. Sandbox limits are not quantified.
Included allowances on paid Pro plan (not free) high confidence
Pro: $20 per user per month, or $200 per user per year on cloud. Includes 20 SMS per month (then $0.20 each), 50 bulk-send signatures per month free (then $0.20 each), unlimited signature requests, unlimited documents sent by email or SMS (FAQ), and a 0% payment fee. Paid add-ons with no free allowance: ID verification $2 per verification, KBA $2 per check, qualified e-signature $2 to $4 each, AI fields $100 per month.
Eligibility
Paid subscription only. No student, startup or nonprofit discount was found on the pricing page or in the sitemap.
How to claim
Subscribe to Pro from https://www.docuseal.com/pricing (the Pro card links to 'Try it Now'). Choose monthly or annual billing.
Expiry
Renewal terms not stated. Annual billing is $200 per user per year versus $240 per user per year at the monthly rate (12 x $20).
Gotchas
'Try it Now' is not a trial: no trial length or credits are stated. The included allowances are small. The 50 free bulk-send signatures and 20 SMS per month apply only after paying, so this is not a free offer for students or startups.