Best offer on record: Pusher Channels — Sandbox free tier. 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Pusher Channels — Sandbox free tier high confidence
Free, no time limit, self-serve. Limits: 200,000 messages/day and 100 concurrent connections, Standard support, Functions included. A 'message' = every API publish received plus one delivery to each connected client (one publish to 50 subscribers = 51 messages), so fan-out burns the daily quota fast. A 'connection' = one live user; how many channels that user subscribes to does not increase the count. Next paid tier is Startup at $49/mo (1M msgs/day, 500 CC).
Eligibility
Open to everyone — no .edu email, no startup age/funding cap, no application, no stated region limits. Free sign-up from the dashboard; the official page does not state a credit card is required, and the third-party tracker freetier.wiki (checked 18 Oct 2026) records 'Card required: No', hard cap: no, resets: daily.
How to claim
Create a Pusher account (dashboard.pusher.com), create a Channels app in the dashboard, copy app_key/app_secret from App Keys — the app starts on the free Sandbox plan with no application or approval step.
Expiry
No expiry or duration limit; it is an always-free tier. Upgrade/downgrade/cancel at any time from the dashboard, prorated by day. Pusher emails you when you approach plan limits; the page says plans have 'headroom for spikes' but does not publish a hard overage rate or cut-off behavior (the legal quotas page says hard limits are enforced and apps can be disabled for failing to upgrade).
Gotchas
Daily (not monthly) caps: 200k msgs/day can mean up to ~6.2M/month but a single busy day can exhaust the quota. The known-earlier figure of '~5,000 channel pushes/month' is the pre-2023 old free plan and no longer exists. No SLA on free tier (SLAs only for select enterprise customers). Standard support only. 'Startup' on this page is a paid tier name ($49/mo), not a startup program. Free tier is for prototypes/low-traffic; the next step is $49/mo flat (no usage metering — plans are ceilings, overages rate-limit rather than bill).
Pusher Beams — Sandbox free tier (mobile/web push) high confidence
Pusher Beams (the push-notification product covering iOS/Android/web push; Pusher itself has no email or SMS offering — the footer notes Pusher is part of MessageBird, whose separate product covers email/SMS). Beams free Sandbox: up to 1,000 subscribers, Standard support. Next paid tiers: Startup $29/mo (10,000 subscribers), Pro $99/mo (50,000), Business $199/mo (115,000), Premium $399/mo (250,000).
Eligibility
Open to everyone; 'Sign up for free' via the dashboard, no application. No .edu requirement or stated region limits. The official page does not state whether a credit card is required for the free tier.
How to claim
Create a Pusher account and create a Beams app in the dashboard; it runs on the free Sandbox plan (1,000-subscriber cap) with no trial-approval step.
Expiry
No stated duration limit on the free tier; the cap is a standing subscriber ceiling (1,000 registered device/subscriber tokens), not a monthly send allowance. No per-plan message/throughput caps are published on the page.
Gotchas
1,000 is a subscriber (device-token) cap — once you have 1,000 registered subscribers you must pay $29/mo even if send volume is tiny. No trial of the paid tiers is listed. The '$29 Startup' Beams tier is a flat plan name, not a startup program.
No trial credits, startup program, or education license found (negative finding) medium confidence
As of 2026-10-22: (1) No free trial of the paid Channels/Beams plans is listed on any official page (third-party pricing checks list 'Free trial: None listed'). (2) No startup program: pusher.com/startups/ returns 404; 'Startup' is only the name of the entry paid tier on both Channels and Beams. (3) No education/student license: pusher.com/education/ returns 404; no student program or .edu discount is mentioned on the Channels or Beams pricing, product, or docs pages read today.
Eligibility
n/a — absence of offers. Both Sandbox free tiers above are the only free offers and are open to students and startups on the same terms as anyone else.
How to claim
n/a
Expiry
n/a
Gotchas
The session's shared WebSearch budget was exhausted, so this negative result rests on the official pages fetched today (pricing/product/docs, plus 404 checks of /startups/ and /education/) and search-result snippets already retrieved, not on exhaustive site-wide search.
1) The old Pusher Channels free plan (~5,000 channel pushes/month, ~100 concurrent connections — the figure in the 'known so far' note) was retired when Pusher introduced the quota-based Sandbox plan (announced 20 Jan 2023, https://pusher.com/blog/pushers-sandbox-plan/): 200,000 messages/day + 100 concurrent connections, free, no card. It is not the same as the old monthly-pushed figure (200k/day ≈ up to 6.2M/month). 2) The Channels pricing lineup changed on 2026-03-26 per PulseSignal's pricing history ('Plan removed / pricing unit changed'); the page as read today lists 8 fixed tiers (Sandbox, Startup $49, Pro $99, Business $299, Premium $499, Growth $699, Plus $899, Growth Plus $1,199) + Enterprise; the specific plan removed on that date could not be confirmed from official sources today. 3) No 2025-2026 sunset of any free offer was found: both Sandbox free tiers (Channels 200k msgs/day + 100 CC; Beams 1,000 subscribers) are live on the official pages as of 2026-10-22. 4) No dedicated Pusher education, student, or startup-credits program exists at the URLs checked; Pusher (a London company, part of MessageBird per its own footer) has no email/SMS product of its own — email/SMS would come from the MessageBird/Infobip side, outside Pusher's free offers.