The free tier is the real product tour

How a company shapes the free version tells you more about how it will treat you later than any feature page.

A free tier is a set of decisions made under pressure. Someone had to choose what to give away, what to hold back, and where to put the wall. Those choices are readable.

The useful question is not how much you get. It is what shape the limit takes. A limit on volume says: use this properly, pay when it becomes load bearing. A limit that removes export, or history, or the ability to leave, says something else. So does a free tier that works beautifully until the exact moment you have put real work into it.

Read the limit before the feature list. It is a better predictor of the second year than anything written in the pricing table.