Free
$0, forever. "Host, swap, earn. Everything works."
Free is not a trial and not a crippled demo. It is a complete working account: you can enrol channels in the Subscriber Exchange, buy from the whole Boost catalogue, list channels and book placements in the escrow-protected marketplace, run cross-promotions, draft copy with AI, deposit funds and withdraw earnings. What the paid ladder adds is speed, scale and margin — not permission.
Free plan. A new account's dashboard. Every product tile is live from the first day — nothing here is greyed out because you have not paid.
Who it is for
- Anyone starting out, testing the platform, or running one or two channels.
- Channel owners who want to earn from hosting before spending anything.
- Advertisers with occasional, small campaigns.
How to get it
Sign up at onflowads.com/signup. Every new account starts on Free, and an account whose paid membership has expired returns to Free automatically. On the pricing page the status pill reads "You're on Free · Wallet $0.00 · Top up" and the Free card's button reads Current plan, disabled.
What Free includes, area by area
Subscriber Exchange
The swap network where channels host each other's ads for credits.
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Enrolled channels | 5 |
| Active ads at once | 2 |
| Base placements per 30-day cycle | 7 |
| Maximum placements per cycle | 7 — credit-bought extras are not available |
| Credit-earning multiplier | 1.0x |
| Matching priority | 0 |
| Matching focus | The whole eligible pool |
| Distinct channels one ad reaches per week | 2 |
| Penalty-free grace deletes per cycle | 0 |
| Competitor blocklist | — |
| Attribution line on ads carried by your channels | Yes — "advertisement via onflowads.com" |
Topic (niche) and language targeting are open on Free, exactly as they are on every rung above: a badly matched placement wastes the host's audience as much as yours, so basic relevance was never put behind a price.
Not part of Free: country targeting, scheduled starts, day-parting, size-band targeting, the competitor blocklist, lookalike host targeting, custom matcher weights and the delivery floor.
Refusing a specific ad on one of your own channels carries no penalty at any rung — a host's veto is not something the ladder sells. And appealing a moderation decision is open to every tier at no charge. Every plan's ads go through the same review queue.
The attribution line is a fact about your channels, not about your ads. Every ad the platform delivers carries the line "advertisement via onflowads.com" one blank line under the copy, in all three products — unless the owner of the channel it lands in is on Plus or above. On Free, that owner is you: ads hosted by your channels carry the line. Ads you place in somebody else's channel follow that host's plan, not yours, so a Free advertiser's ad in a Plus owner's channel goes out clean. There is no toggle at any tier and it is not sold separately. See The attribution line.
Separately from the ladder, any account — Free included — can pay for one-off per-campaign delivery upgrades (extra placements, higher priority) when submitting an exchange ad. The price is shown at submission and refunded in full if the ad is declined.
Boost
The growth storefront. The whole catalogue is open on Free — Boost earns on the order, not on the membership.
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Standing discount | 0% |
| Maximum order size | $25 |
| Live orders at once | 5 |
| Auto-Boost subscriptions | 1 |
| Mass-order rows | — |
| Status-refresh cooldown | 60 seconds |
Not included: dripfeed and scheduled orders, auto-refill, mass orders, CSV exports, the premium-only part of the catalogue, eligibility for the multi-item bundle discount, priority delivery, developer API keys, included delivery guarantees, order webhooks and the Wholesale Desk.
Paid Promotions (the marketplace)
Full access on both sides, with escrow, disputes and reviews included as they are at every tier — and the same marketplace fee as every other plan.
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Channel listings | 5 |
| Placements per month | 30 |
| Saved ad templates | 2 |
| Photos per creative | 2 |
| Listing re-verify cooldown | 15 days |
| Placement monitoring cadence | 60 minutes |
| Owner payout speed | After the full run |
| Featured days per month | 0 |
| Catalog rank boost | 0 |
| Spotlight deals | One per channel every 5 days, 1 at a time |
| Dispute resolution | No published target |
Not included: video creatives, instant listing auto-verify, synced cart and saved channels, wishlist price-drop alerts, the AI Channel Picker and Channel finder searches, channel bundles, weekly recurring rebook, running auctions, proxy bids, Proof Certificates, Verified Delivery Insurance, Retention Escrow, the Performance Passport, the Reach Dedup Advisor and first-look inventory.
Whether a channel may enter the marketplace at all is a separate question from your plan. A Paid Promotions listing needs a public channel with at least 1,000 subscribers, and starting a deal needs a reliability score of at least 4.0 out of 10. Neither is affected by your tier. See Marketplace entry gates.
Cross-Promotion
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Campaign initiations per calendar month | 5 |
| Add-on discount | — |
| Boost-credit reward per clean completion | — |
| Campaign insurance | Paid add-on only |
| Blitz multi-channel campaigns | — |
The enforced volume limit is initiations per calendar month — how many campaigns you start. There is no cap on how many run at the same time, and joining somebody else's campaign is never capped by tier. A campaign that never actually ran does not spend a slot.
Cross-Promotion also has the strictest reliability floor on the platform, at 5.0 out of 10, which applies at every tier.
AI
| Free | |
|---|---|
| AI texts per UTC day | 1 |
| AI texts per calendar month | 3 |
| AI images | — |
The AI writer is a button inside every post composer, and Free reaches it like any other rung. An action is blocked when either window is exhausted, so the practical Free allowance is three text generations a month, no more than one a day. The day window resets at 00:00 UTC; the month window resets on the calendar month. Image generation is a Master-and-above feature and no reliability bonus lifts it earlier.
Your reliability score can reduce these numbers further — an account under review gets no AI at all. The counter in the AI panel is always the authority.
Post composer
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Inline buttons per post | — |
| Coloured inline buttons | — |
| Public Telegram links | Yes |
| Private Telegram links | — |
| Non-Telegram links | With the $1 External Links add-on |
| Ads in your channels run without the attribution line | — |
Buttons are switched off rather than reduced on Free: the composer shows one locked Inline buttons row, and its Locked button says in a notice that buttons come with Lite. Private Telegram links — invite links, joinchat links and t.me/c/ links — are refused with "Private Telegram links are not available on this account." Non-Telegram URLs are not a rung at all; the $1 add-on unlocks them on Free just as it does anywhere else. See Post buttons and links.
Button colours start at Plus, and on Free the colour swatches are not drawn at all — there is no locked control naming the rung, which makes this the one composer limit the product does not announce. A creative saved on a paid plan that already carries colours keeps them until you re-save it on Free, at which point they are dropped without a message. The buttons themselves survive.
Wallet
| Free | |
|---|---|
| Deposits and in-platform spend | Full |
| Deposit fee on top-ups | 9% |
| Withdrawals | Yes |
| Withdrawal fee | 15% |
| Withdrawal requests per calendar month | 1 |
The deposit fee is the platform's commission on a wallet top-up. It is added on top of the amount you choose — you are always credited the full amount you type — and the exact figure is shown in the breakdown at checkout before you pay.
Analytics, support and interface
- Analytics: the campaign rollup, which is open to every tier. CSV export starts at Plus, the branded PDF report at Elite, and raw per-sample data at Master. A $5 per-campaign analytics pass unlocks all three for one campaign at any tier, Free included.
- Support: email support, the same desk every tier writes to — it answers in order of recency, not by tier. The Onflow AI support chat is metered on Free at 30 messages per rolling 30-day cycle (your message counts one and the reply counts one, so roughly fifteen exchanges); every paid rung is unlimited. The email path to a human is never metered. Signed in, the chat also answers about your own account on Free — your IDs, orders, wallet, campaigns and standing; having it act for you (cancel, confirm, delete, the data report) starts at Plus.
- Interface: plain styling on the Telegram bot's messages. Premium styling (animated emoji, coloured inline buttons on the messages the bot sends you) starts at Plus, and the website has no premium skin at any rung.
- Badge: none.
What you would gain by moving up
Lite at $11 a month is aimed squarely at what Free holds back from people who are actually earning: the withdrawal fee drops from 15% to 12% with 3 requests a month, the deposit fee drops from 9% to 7.5% on every top-up, and marketplace payouts land within 7 days rather than after the full run. It also doubles your exchange channels, unlocks country targeting and scheduled starts, opens dripfeed, scheduling, auto-refill and CSV exports in Boost, adds instant listing auto-verify, and gives you your first inline post button.
Lite does not remove the attribution line — that starts at Plus, and it removes it from ads carried by your channels rather than from the ads you place.
See Comparing the tiers for the full side-by-side.
Frequently asked
Is Free time-limited?
No. It has no expiry and no trial clock.
Can I really withdraw money on Free?
Yes — one request per calendar month, at a 15% fee, through the same manual review queue every tier passes. Promotional or earned credit marked non-withdrawable stays in-platform at every tier.
What happens to my work if I buy a plan and it later expires?
You return to Free. Nothing is deleted — channels, listings, campaigns, history and wallet balance all stay. Only limits, fees and features change. See Downgrading and letting a plan lapse.
Does Free get the first-purchase discount?
Your first-ever premium purchase gets an automatic 10% discount, applied in the checkout without a code — as long as you have never held a paid tier and have no premium charge anywhere in your wallet history. See How billing works.
Can I get a paid tier by referring people?
No. Referring people pays in non-withdrawable boost credit, not in tier — a share of every top-up the person you referred pays. See Referral Programme.
Related
- Lite — the first paid rung, and what changes from everything on this page.
- Comparing the tiers — the whole ladder in one place.
- Marketplace entry gates — the floors that apply whatever you pay.
- Where tier limits appear — where a Free limit will show up while you work.