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Verified Free / Software

Is Slack actually free?

Free-ish
How free55/100
Value6/10
How these scores work
Free Score (0–100) follows a fixed rubric: cards up front, auto-billing, hard time cutoffs, withheld core features, and paying with your data or attention all deduct points. 90–100 truly free · 70–89 free forever · 45–69 squeezed · 15–44 trial mechanics · under 15 fake or gone. Value (0–10) is editorial: real-world worth of the free offering measured against its paid equivalent. Full rubric on the methodology page.

Sort of. Free Slack works fine day to day — until you search for something from four months ago and find it's been hidden behind the upgrade wall.

What it’s worth

Slack Pro is $7.25 per user per month — your own history is what it sells back.

What you get free

  • Unlimited members in a workspace
  • Your most recent 90 days of messages and files
  • 10 app integrations
  • 5GB of shared file storage
  • 1-on-1 huddle calls (30 minutes)

In practice: a fine live chat room for a small team — as long as you treat anything older than a season as gone.

Drawbacks

  • A 90-day visibility wall on your own messages
  • Free-plan data older than one year is permanently deleted
  • The 10-app cap pinches real workflows

Also paywalled

  • Messages older than 90 days (permanently deleted at 1 year)
  • Group huddles and calls
  • Unlimited apps and workflow automation
  • Message exports beyond public channels

Free facts

VerdictFree-ish
Card requiredNo
Auto-bills—
AccountRequired
Limits90 days of visible message history
The real costYour own chat history, held behind the paid tier.

The catch

Your older messages aren't deleted the moment they age out — they're withheld, and upgrading brings them back. But on the free plan the archive you think you're building is one you cannot read past 90 days, which for a team's institutional memory amounts to much the same thing.

The smart play

  • Export public-channel history regularly — free-plan admins can, and day 91 is too late
  • Know the hard line: free-plan data older than one year is deleted forever, even if you upgrade later
  • Keep decisions and specs in a docs tool; let Slack be the chatter layer it's priced as

Common questions

Does Slack require a credit card?
No — Slack does not ask for a card to use the free version. Auto-billing: —.
What are the limits of Slack's free plan?
90 days of visible message history. Your older messages aren't deleted the moment they age out — they're withheld, and upgrading brings them back. But on the free plan the archive you think you're building is one you cannot read past 90 days, which for a team's institutional memory amounts to much the same thing.
How do I use Slack without paying?
Export public-channel history regularly — free-plan admins can, and day 91 is too late Know the hard line: free-plan data older than one year is deleted forever, even if you upgrade later Keep decisions and specs in a docs tool; let Slack be the chatter layer it's priced as
What does Slack really cost?
Your own chat history, held behind the paid tier.
Why is Slack free?
Your own chat history, held behind the paid tier. Slack Pro is $7.25 per user per month — your own history is what it sells back.
Is Slack still free?
As of our August 2026 check, partly — and the free tier is squeezed. Sort of. Free Slack works fine day to day — until you search for something from four months ago and find it's been hidden behind the upgrade wall. Free tiers change without notice, which is why every page here carries the date it was checked.

More info — tap to expand

Hidden vs. deleted — the exact timeline
Days 1–90: visible. After day 90: hidden but stored — upgrade and the past year reappears. After one year on the free plan: permanently deleted, and no upgrade brings it back. That last rule is the one teams learn too late.
What you can export, and what you can't
Free workspace admins can export public-channel history. Private channels and DMs are excluded — those need paid plans with compliance export. So the 'we'll export before day 90' plan only covers the public half of your conversations.
Calls on free
Huddles are 1-on-1 only and capped around half an hour; group calls are paid. For team calls, free users bolt on Meet or Zoom — awkward, but standard practice.

Checked: August 2026 · Verdict: Free-ish — a free tier exists, but it's shaped to squeeze you toward paying.

🍁 Canada

Same free tier worldwide. Paid plans billed in USD for Canadian teams.

Ratings elsewhereG2 4.5/5App Store 4.1/550KGoogle Play 4.6/5211KLive scores from the sources named — not ours. Store counts rounded.

What users actually say

G2 4.5/5 from business users · App Store 4.1/5 · Google Play 4.6/5.

What they praiseReliability, search, and the integration ecosystem are the consistent compliments — there's a reason most teams standardised on it.
What they complain aboutThe free plan's 90-day visible history dominates the grievances: teams discover their institutional memory has aged out of view, and the only fix is a per-seat subscription. Notification volume is the runner-up.

Product complaints are minor; the free-tier complaint is structural. On the free plan you are renting visibility into your own archive — and after a year the older messages are gone for good.

Our reading of the public review record — patterns, not quotes. Scores link to their sources above.

Visit Slack →

Was this verdict right?

Free tiers change without notice. If you have just used it, you know something we don't.

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