"Free forever" can sound like a slogan that promises everything. Read it more narrowly. It's the name of a free plan with a stated allowance and a stated pace for checking comments. It doesn't mean any part of the product is unlimited.

A tray with no paid subscription is on the Free Plan. That isn't a trial of a paid plan with a clock running in the background. There's no paid trial at all at the moment, and you don't need a subscription to use Free.

Why there is a Free Plan

Need and ability to pay do not arrive on the same schedule. A channel can have a community worth looking after before it produces enough money to justify another monthly bill.

Mike built The Litter Tray after his own channel grew to 50,000 subscribers and its comments grew well past 50,000. He wanted to look after the community around it without bracing himself every time he opened the comments. Nobody should have to get that big before they can have help with moderation.

The Free Plan rests on one belief: a community doesn't need less care because its creator can't pay yet. And you can read exactly what Free gives you, the allowance and how often it checks, before you connect a channel.

What the Free Plan includes today

Two numbers define it:

  • 50 AI credits a month. One credit is one successful AI prompt: a comment classification, a rule preview, or an idea digest.
  • New comments checked about every hour.

The Free Plan doesn't expire. Today, what puts a tray on Free is simply that it has no paid subscription. It doesn't matter how many subscribers your channel has.

The one thing Free asks of you: turn up

There is a condition, and it is the only one. A Free tray is kept by being used. If no admin signs in or uses the app for three days, we pause it and email you to say so. If there's still been no admin by day five, we close the tray and wipe the data it imported.

If an admin signs in or uses the app before the tray closes, it isn't closed. Once it has closed, coming back starts a fresh tray. The old imported data doesn't come back.

Pausing means the checking stops. It does not mean anything is deleted. Your rules, your archive and anything waiting for your decision are all still there, and they stay there through the pause and through the two days after the email.

We do not close a tray without writing to you first. If that email cannot be delivered, the tray is not closed at all: it waits for a person to look at it. The warning is not a formality we can skip when it is inconvenient.

Paid plans do not pause for inactivity. None of this applies to Solo, Creator or Studio. A paid tray runs whether or not you ever open it, which is a quiet part of what paying buys.

And there's no clock counting down to a bill. A Free tray never becomes a paid one by itself.

What it does not include

Free isn't a paid plan at a lower price. It comes with 50 AI credits a month and checks for new comments about every hour. Paid plans give you more credits and shorter waits.

On Free you can use every feature, in smaller amounts. Nothing is locked away, so you can judge the whole tool before you pay for any of it.

What “forever” means here

“Forever” describes time, not volume. It does not turn 50 credits into unlimited AI reading or make hourly checks as frequent as five-minute checks.

One word can't carry a whole set of promises. By itself, "forever" says nothing about whether allowances can change, whether existing accounts keep their old limits, whether advertising could appear, how account data may be used, or what happens to paid prices. Each of those would be its own commitment.

What's left is a meaning you can check today: no subscription, no trial clock, a stated allowance and a stated pace. The name should send you to those details. It doesn't replace them.

Correction, 5 September 2026: a rule preview also spends a credit. The sentence above said classification or digest only.

Correction, 20 September 2026: Clarified that signing in prevents inactivity closure only before the tray closes.