Best offer on record: Kit Free plan (standing free tier, Email). 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Kit Free plan (standing free tier, Email) high confidence
$0/mo permanent free tier: up to 10,000 email subscribers; 'unlimited email broadcasts' and 'unlimited landing pages & forms' per the live pricing page (no monthly email cap is stated on any official page — the '1,000 emails/mo' figure from known-so-far is not confirmed on current official pages); 1 user seat; audience tagging/segmentation; 2-subject-line A/B; digital products & subscriptions with 3.5% + 30c transaction fee; Creator Network with 5 Smart Recommendation slots; 'API access' and free Kit App Store apps (paid apps excluded). Excluded: visual automations, email sequences, rules & RSS campaigns, AI connectors, SMS marketing, Paid Recommendations (23.5% fee), Kit MCP, subscriber engagement scoring, deliverability reporting, custom tracking domain, 24/7 support. Support answered within 24h in receive order.
Eligibility
Anyone with an email address — no .edu required, no region limit stated. No credit card required (signup button is 'Try Kit for free'; the pricing page's no-CC language applies to the trial, and the free tier is the default account state). Free 'for as long as you stay under 10,000 subscribers'; crossing 10,000 forces upgrade to a paid plan to keep sending. No expiry date.
How to claim
1) Go to kit.com and click 'Try Kit for free' / 'Get started'. 2) Complete signup — new accounts start on the Free plan. 3) Optionally verify via Dashboard > Billing to confirm plan type. No application, referral, or code needed.
Expiry
Permanent; no renewal date. Exits only when user exceeds 10,000 subscribers (upgrade required) or cancels the account.
Gotchas
(1) Pricing page says 'unlimited email broadcasts' on Free but the help article says cancel/downgrade 'moves your account... to our free plan, which has fewer features and a lower sending limit' — treat Free as a reduced-cap plan; verify the live cap in-app for your account. (2) 'Unlimited' broadcasts come with a 3.5%+30c fee on commerce (incl. Kit's 0.6% of fees). (3) Downgrading a paid account stops automations/sequences from running until re-upgrade. (4) API/email-stats retention is now clamped to 5 years (API change 2026-10-15). (5) Features like 'apps/integrations' presence varies: Free gets API access + free apps but NOT paid App Store apps, paid Recommendations, or SMS.
14-day free trial of paid plans (Creator & Pro) high confidence
14-day free trial of Creator and Pro plans with full paid features (Creator: unlimited subscribers, unlimited visual automations/sequences/RSS, 2 users; Pro: everything + unlimited users, 5-subject-line A/B + content A/B, SMS marketing, Kit MCP, Subscriber Signals, Growth Concierge). Post-trial pricing: Creator '$33/mo' billed yearly at '$390 billed yearly — Save $78 per year' (monthly tier $39/mo at 1,000-subscriber tier per billing help article; $59/mo at 3,000-subscriber tier); Pro '$66' listed with 'EXTRA 25% OFF FIRST YEAR' promo at '$50/mo — $593 billed first year, Save $355 first year; footnote: discount applies only to first year, plan renews at standard rate. Free migrations offered alongside the trial.
Eligibility
New accounts (trial users); no .edu, no startup age/funding cap, no region restriction stated. Credit card NOT required to start ('No credit card required. Cancel anytime').
How to claim
1) On kit.com/pricing click 'Start 14-day free trial' under Creator or Pro. 2) Sign up without a card. 3) To stay paid after 14 days, add a payment method (Stripe runs a $1 verification charge that reverses in ~7 days when a card is added/changed); otherwise the account falls back to the Free plan with reduced limits.
Expiry
Trial lasts 14 days from signup; the Pro 25% discount lasts only the first year of Pro. API exposes trial state (on_trial, trial_lapse_date, renews_at) since 2026-07-09, confirming trial lapse is date-based.
Gotchas
(1) This is a trial, not a free tier — after 14 days you are billed at the chosen (yearly/monthly) rate unless you cancel or lack a saved payment method. (2) Trial price is quoted at the 1,000-subscriber tier; price scales as your list grows. (3) Annual billing = '12 months for the price of 10', no refunds beyond standard 30-day policy. (4) 'Discount applies only to your first year of Pro' — renews at standard $66 rate. (5) Pro trial is where SMS/Push/Chat features unlock — there is no standalone free SMS/Push/Chat trial separate from the plan trial.
Developer / API access on Free plan (Email API v4, webhooks, App Store) medium confidence
The Free plan help article lists 'API access' as an included extra, alongside free (non-paid) Kit App Store apps. Kit's developer platform (developers.kit.com) provides V4 REST API (api.kit.com/v4: broadcasts, subscribers, sequences CRUD, forms, webhooks 2.0, OAuth for apps, MCP docs server, V4 sandbox added June 2025) plus App Store publishing and OAuth (/v4/oauth, DCR RFC 7591 since 2026-05-20). API keys are test-only; OAuth is required to go live. No per-plan rate limits or quota tables are published. SMS, Push, and Chat: no SMS/push/chat API docs exist in the developer index (llms.txt) — the SMS marketing feature itself is paid-only (excluded from Free), so 'free SMS/Push/Chat API' does not exist as an offer.
Eligibility
Any plan is 'eligible for use with the API, apps and legacy integrations' per the API overview (it defers specifics to the pricing page); Free-plan help docs explicitly include 'API access', so Email-API usage is available on Free. No card, no .edu. No region limit. Gating detail (which endpoints differ by plan) is not publicly documented — free plan cannot install PAID Kit App Store apps.
How to claim
1) Create a Kit account on Free plan. 2) Generate an API key (test) or register an app via OAuth to access api.kit.com/v4 endpoints for free. 3) To ship an app, follow developers.kit.com/kit-app-store (OAuth required to go live). No separate signup or application for API access.
Expiry
Ongoing while account exists; Free API access ends if the account is cancelled. No stated sunset.
Gotchas
(1) 'API access' on Free is asserted by the help article but the developer docs only say the plan must be 'eligible' — plan-tier endpoint differences and rate limits are undocumented; verify empirically. (2) Paid App Store apps are not available on Free. (3) Email-stats retention is clamped to 5 years as of 2026-10-15 (older requests return 400). (4) Legacy v3/v4 webhooks are kept but Webhooks 2.0 (endpoint-based, signed, batched) shipped 2026-08-27 — plan code around the legacy format accordingly.
No student/education license and no startup program exist for Kit as of 2026-10-22: kit.com/education and kit.com/startups return 404, the pricing page has no student/startup offer, and the help center's 14 collections (incl. 'Getting Started', 'Managing Your Account', 'Creator Network', 'Kit Studios') contain no education/students or startup-discount items. Kit's actual programs — Kit Expert program, Creator Network (5 free Smart Recommendation slots on every plan incl. Free), and Kit Studios (paid session-booking service) — are creator/consultant programs, not free student/startup offers. 2025-2026 material changes: (1) Kit executed its 'first price increase in 12 years' in 2025, effective after Oct 15, 2025, with 30-day notice (per help billing article) — paid plans became more expensive (Creator $39/mo monthly at the 1k tier; the Free plan's core offer — 10,000 subscribers, 1 user, no card — was not changed by this). (2) The '1,000 emails/mo' free-plan cap circulating in prior notes is NOT confirmed on any official page fetched today; the live pricing page says 'unlimited email broadcasts' for Free — treat 1,000/mo as unverified/outdated. (3) API/data policy: email-stats retention clamped to 5 years (2026-10-15); Webhooks 2.0 launched 2026-08-27 with legacy webhooks retained. (4) Historical: ConvertKit rebranded to Kit (2023) — older 'ConvertKit free plan' sources (300-subscriber cap era) do not apply to current offers.
Critic corrections
Free Creator plan: 10,000 subscribers, 1,000 emails/mo, 1 user: The free plan is the Newsletter Plan: up to 10,000 subscribers with unlimited email sends. Creator is a paid plan starting at $39/month for up to 1,000 subscribers. The 1,000 emails/month cap is not supported.