Is Dify free?
By Riley Park · Last verified: September 2026
Yes, in two different ways. The self-hosted Community Edition is free with no license fee and no usage meter; you run it on your own infrastructure. The cloud Sandbox tier is also free, with 200 one-time message credits, one member, and five apps, and is meant for trying the hosted product. Paid cloud plans are Professional ($59/mo, or $590/yr) and Team ($159/mo, or $1,590/yr). Verified on dify.ai/pricing, September 22, 2026.
How much does Dify cost per month? On the cloud: Sandbox $0, Professional $59 a month or $590 a year (5,000 message credits, 3 members, 50 apps), Team $159 a month or $1,590 a year (10,000 credits, 50 members, 200 apps), Enterprise custom. Some third-party pages quote "$49" for Professional; that is the annual rate divided by twelve, not the monthly price.
Which free option is the real one. The Sandbox is a trial by another name: 200 credits once, not per month, so it runs out and stays out. The Community Edition is the genuine free product, with almost the full feature set, and it is the reason Dify scores highest in DDR's category on Unique Capabilities. The trade is that you host, update, and secure it yourself, and support is community-forum only.
The license. Dify publishes its source under its own license, Apache 2.0 with two added conditions: no multi-tenant commercial hosting of Dify itself without permission, and the branding stays. For a team self-hosting its own agents, neither condition changes anything.
What the cloud tiers add over self-hosting. Managed hosting, email support from Professional, and no infrastructure to run. If the credit meter is the objection, self-hosting removes it; if running software is the objection, Professional is the entry point.