Best offer on record: Meilisearch Cloud 14-day free trial. 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Meilisearch Cloud 14-day free trial high confidence
Cloud plan (usage-based or resource-based billing) ships with a 14-day free trial, 'no credit card required' — stated verbatim on the pricing page and reconfirmed in its FAQ ('No credit card required to start'). Sign-up is self-serve at cloud.meilisearch.com/register. No trial-specific caps (docs/searches/instance size) are published; the page only states the trial is included with the Cloud plan. After 14 days a paid plan applies: from ~$20/mo (resource-based XS instance: $18 instance + ~$5 disk, 0.5 vCPU/1GB, 32 GiB) or ~$30/mo (usage-based, covering 100K docs + 50K searches).
Eligibility
Anyone; no .edu, no startup criteria, no region limit stated, no credit card at signup (card needed only to keep using it after the trial).
How to claim
1. Go to meilisearch.com/pricing (or /cloud). 2. Click 'Start free trial' → cloud.meilisearch.com/register. 3. Create account, provision an instance (usage- or resource-based), use it for up to 14 days. 4. Add a card before expiry to continue.
Expiry
Trial lasts 14 days per account; no published data-retention-after-trial-end policy found on the official pages.
Gotchas
Trial ≠ free tier: there is no permanent free plan — paid billing (from ~$20/mo) kicks in if you keep the instance. No published trial quotas; over the trial you enter paid usage-based billing for extra searches/docs. Eggress/data costs are folded into the per-plan resource/usage pricing, not separately itemized on the page.
Open-source Meilisearch (MIT) self-hosted — free, no usage limits high confidence
The Meilisearch engine is open source under the MIT license and the pricing page states self-hosting has 'no usage limits' (no per-document or per-search charge). This is the genuine always-free option for students and startups: host it on any infrastructure (or a cheap VM/container) with no vendor license cost. A separate paid 'self-hosted support agreement' with SLA is available for compliance-driven customers.
Eligibility
Anyone (unlimited use); not gated by .edu, funding, age, or region. Only constraint is you run the infrastructure yourself.
How to claim
1. Pull the engine (Docker/npm/binary) from GitHub (github.com/meilisearch). 2. Self-host anywhere. No signup, license, or payment. 3. Optionally contact Meilisearch for a paid support agreement if an SLA is needed.
Gotchas
Free means you own ops, scaling, and hosting cost — your cloud/VM bill replaces Meilisearch's. No SLA or support by default. Not 'free cloud storage'; docs live wherever you host.
No dedicated startup program or education license exists (the /solutions/startup page is marketing only) medium confidence
The 'Startups' page (/solutions/startup) is a general early-stage-marketing page: no free credits, no fixed discount, no company-age or funding cap, no application/verification flow, no expiry. Its only 'free' hooks are (a) the MIT self-host engine and (b) the standard 14-day Cloud trial. Its FAQ says custom pricing and volume discounts are available 'regardless of company size or funding stage' — i.e., startup deals are via sales, not a public program. No education page exists: candidate URLs (meilisearch.com/solutions/education and /education) return 404; site navigation and the official llms.txt list no education/student page and no .edu-email offer.
Eligibility
Not applicable — nothing distinct to claim. Startup deals would be negotiated with sales ('Request a demo'), with no published eligibility (age/funding cap unknown).
How to claim
Students: use the 14-day Cloud trial or self-host the MIT build (no .edu gate, no license fee). Startups: same as everyone else, or contact sales for custom/volume pricing.
Expiry
None published. Re-verify with sales for any negotiated startup discount — it is not a self-serve offer.
Gotchas
Do not assume a startup discount exists just because the page exists; there are no verifiable credit amounts or eligibility windows. Any deal comes through sales and may carry custom (not discounted) terms.
No 2025-2026 sunsets or material changes identified from the official pages read today (2026-10-22): the 14-day, no-credit-card trial and the paid-from-$20/month structure are live and match known-so-far. Caveat: the WebSearch budget for this session was exhausted, so I could not run a 2025-2026 changelog search; I rely on the live official pages (pricing, startup, llms.txt, /cloud) instead. Meilisearch has no education/student license and no public startup credit program at present — if either was ever offered, it is not advertised anywhere on the current site; absence on site ≠ confirmed historical sunset. 'Fronts: Managed Databases & Data Platforms' is a category mismatch: Meilisearch is a search engine, not a managed database.