Yes, Cloudinary has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans. The free plan includes 3 users per account and 25 monthly credits. FreeTier.co estimates the free tier at about $99/mo, and no credit card is required to sign up.
About
Cloudinary is an image and video API platform for uploading, storing, transforming, optimizing, and delivering media assets through APIs, widgets, and a web UI. The platform includes image and video transformations, video transcoding and adaptive streaming, remote fetch, auto-backup, revision tracking, and CDN delivery.
The free offering includes 3 users on 1 account and 25 monthly credits for the image and video APIs. The separate Assets DAM free plan includes 3 users on 1 account and 25 GB of storage, with AI-powered auto-tagging, video support, and asset variation tools.
- 3 users on 1 account
- 25 monthly credits
- 25 GB DAM storage
- Image and video transformations
- Video transcoding and adaptive streaming
- CDN delivery
- Auto-backup and revision tracking
- AI-powered auto-tagging
Free Tier Value
This free tier is perpetual and does not require a credit card, so it has real ongoing value rather than just a short trial. The closest paid plan is Plus at $99/month, and the free tier keeps the core upload, transformation, delivery, and support capabilities while limiting usage to 25 monthly credits and a small team size, so it is worth about the same as the entry paid plan but with meaningful caps.
What's included in the free tier
Verified
- Access to upload widget, API, and search.
- Access to remote fetch, auto-backup, and revision tracking.
- Access to image and video transformations.
- Access to video transcoding and adaptive streaming.
- Access to high-performance delivery through a CDN.
- Access to support via forums, tickets, and email.
- Access to free add-ons.
- Access to MCP servers.
- 3 users per account.
- 25 monthly credits.
See Cloudinary pricing for current limits.
Paid plans
Plus
- users
- 3
- accounts
- 2
- monthly credits
- 225
- Backup to your own S3 bucket
- Auto-tagging based search
- Access to free and paid add-ons
- Expedited support
- Allowlist/Blocklist asset access
- Role-based multi-user administration
Advanced
- users
- 5
- accounts
- 3
- monthly credits
- 600
- Custom domain (CNAME) support
- Optional HTTPS SSL Certificate
- Authentication Options
Enterprise
- Security and compliance review
- Multi-CDN and enterprise grade infrastructure
- Enterprise SLAs and support
- Designated customer success manager
- Custom contracts and invoicing
- User management (SSO, provisioning API)
Enterprise
- Streamline content operations
- Faster innovation
- Full-team collaboration
- One-file approach
- Collaboration via UI, widget library, REST API or SDK
- Powered by artificial intelligence
Trial
- users
- 3
- accounts
- 1
- storage
- 25 GB
- Easy setup with step-by-step video tutorials
- Auto tagging
- Video support
- Asset variations
Pricing extracted from Cloudinary's pricing page. Always verify current pricing before committing.
Common questions
Is Cloudinary free forever?
Yes. Cloudinary has a permanent free tier alongside its paid plans, though the allowance typically resets each month.
Does Cloudinary require a credit card?
No. You can start on Cloudinary's free tier without entering card details.
What happens when you exceed Cloudinary's free tier?
You move to a paid plan. Cloudinary's cheapest paid plan is Plus at $99 / month.
What is Cloudinary's free tier worth?
Cloudinary's free tier is worth about $99 per month. That maps to an FTV score of 75/100. The FTV score is explained at freetier.co/ftv.
