Best offer on record: Open-Source self-hosted edition (free forever, no caps). 5 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Open-Source self-hosted edition (free forever, no caps) high confidence
Free open-source edition: session replay, DevTools, product analytics, co-browsing, Spot bug reports, heatmaps. No hard caps on events, recordings, users or retention — storage, RAM, vCPUs and retention are 'self-managed'; scalability labeled 'low traffic'. Support is community-only (GitHub, Slack). The live pricing page comparison table lists this tier simply as 'Free' (Open-Source column) and the FAQ says 'Open-Source is free — you host it on your own infrastructure.' No .edu email, no application, no startup program needed — anyone (students, startups, anyone) can self-host it free. License: AGPL-3.0 (openreplay/openreplay on GitHub).
Eligibility
Universal — no application, no .edu email, no age/funding caps, no region limits. Student or startup just self-hosts on any infrastructure.
How to claim
No claim step: clone openreplay/openreplay, deploy via Docker on any host/cloud (docs.openreplay.com); or build free in-repo. Community support only.
Expiry
Indefinite (free-forever, open-source). No renewal.
Gotchas
You pay your own infrastructure (VM, storage, bandwidth/egress) — 'free' software but not free hosting; low-traffic scalability means you must size your own hardware; no SLA, no managed updates; AGPL-3.0 obligations apply to modified redistributed versions; data retention you manage yourself.
7-day free trial of cloud Dedicated (no credit card) high confidence
Dedicated managed cloud instance: 'Start 7-day trial', 'No credit card required', 'a fully-provisioned instance to evaluate before committing'. After trial, Dedicated starts at $199/mo (O1: 8GB RAM, 2 vCPUs, 120GB disk; billed hourly at $0.276/hr; 'stopped instances are still billed a small amount based on disk size'). O2/O3 sized instances go up (vendor's own llms.txt lists O2 $399/mo up to 200K sessions and O3 $799/mo up to 500K, but the live pricing page shows only 'from $199/mo'). 50 regions (AWS/GCP/Azure/BYOC), 2-day automated backups, SSO/SCIM, SOC 2 Type II.
Eligibility
Anyone (student or startup) — sign up required, no .edu email requirement stated, no startup-age or funding cap stated, credit card explicitly NOT required, no region limit for the trial signup.
How to claim
Pricing page → 'Try Cloud' / Dedicated card → 'Start 7-day trial' → OpenReplay provisions a full Dedicated instance; no card, no commitment.
Expiry
7 days; at expiry the instance no longer runs for free — converting to paid requires a plan ($199/mo+ or BYOC flat rate).
Gotchas
Trial is trial-only, not a free tier: nothing persists free after 7 days; billing is hourly from the moment you subscribe, and stopped instances still incur small disk-storage charges; BYOC is billed at a flat monthly rate; O1 estimated $199/mo assumes ~full-month runtime.
Cloud 'Serverless' plan is usage-based: pay only for recorded sessions; OpenReplay's own 2025 blog post and its llms.txt price it at $5.95 per 1,000 sessions (O1-cap ~50K sessions/mo figure appears in O1 Dedicated sizing), and a 2025 blog post states the cloud offering 'includes a 7-day free trial.' The vendor's llms.txt also claims a 'Free cloud tier (1,000 sessions/mo, 2 users)' with 30-day retention — but that tier does NOT appear on the live pricing page as fetched today (only Open-Source 'Free', Dedicated, Enterprise are shown; the page's 'Try Cloud Free' CTA may point to a signup flow). The pricing page today shows no per-session figure, so the $5.95/1K figure is from vendor-secondary pages, not the live pricing page.
Eligibility
Cloud plan, so universal signup (no .edu/age caps stated). If a true free cloud tier (1,000 sessions/mo, 2 users, 30-day retention) exists as llms.txt claims, eligibility would just be account signup.
How to claim
Start with 'Try Cloud' on openreplay.com; confirm at signup whether a free Serverless tier with 1,000 sessions/mo is offered, since the live pricing table omits it.
Expiry
If the 1,000-session free tier exists: renewable monthly up to 1,000 sessions and 2 users; 30-day data retention; overage $5.95/1,000 sessions per llms.txt. Unconfirmed — verify in the signup flow.
Gotchas
llms.txt vs live pricing page conflict — treat the free cloud tier as unverified; per-session billing means cost scales with traffic; 30-day retention on cloud tiers (self-managed on OSS); 'no hard event caps' claim applies only to self-hosted open-source edition.
None found. openreplay.com/education is 404; the live pricing page, llms.txt, and 2025-2026 blog content contain no student pricing, .edu requirement, or academic license of any kind. Students get the same offers as everyone else: free self-hosted open-source edition and the 7-day no-CC trial.
Eligibility
N/A — no dedicated education program.
How to claim
N/A
Expiry
N/A
Gotchas
Do not confuse with a student discount — none exists; the only 'free' value for students is self-hosting the open-source edition (self-paid infrastructure).
None found. No startup program, startup discounts, or trial-credit program appears on the live pricing page, llms.txt, or vendor blog posts checked today; the only vendor framing of startups is the 2025 blog line that usage-based Serverless is 'great for startups and small companies' — i.e., a pricing model, not a program. No WebSearch was possible this session (session search budget exhausted), so a niche startup-program page cannot be 100% ruled out, but all vendor-published pricing surfaces checked today list none.
Eligibility
N/A — no dedicated startup program found.
How to claim
N/A — closest path for a startup: 7-day no-CC Dedicated trial, then Serverless ($5.95/1K sessions per vendor secondary pages) or self-hosted open-source edition at $0 license cost.
Expiry
N/A
Gotchas
After the 7-day trial, no free path remains on hosted plans unless the unverified free cloud tier (1,000 sessions/mo) is live in the signup flow.
Verification note (checked 2026-10-22): the live pricing page today lists only Open-Source (Free, self-hosted), Dedicated (from $199/mo), and Enterprise (custom) — with the Dedicated card carrying the 7-day no-CC trial. No hosted free cloud tier appears in the live page's plan table, yet the vendor's llms.txt (same site, fetched today) still advertises 'Free cloud tier (1,000 sessions/mo, 2 users)' plus O2 $399/mo and O3 $799/mo tiers that also do not appear on the live page — indicating llms.txt is stale (likely written when a free cloud tier and published O2/O3 prices existed) or a free tier was recently sunset from the marketing table without updating llms.txt. OpenReplay's 2025 blog (blog.openreplay.com) describes the stack as: Open-Source free-forever, Serverless $5.95/1K sessions with 7-day free trial, Dedicated from $0.27/hr (~$199/mo). No evidence of any education or startup program ever having existed. Caveat: this session's WebSearch budget was exhausted, so verification relied on direct fetches of openreplay.com pages (pricing page fetched 4x, llms.txt, blog) — no independent third-party corroboration of 2025 changes was possible.