Pricing

It is free. That is the whole page.

Fluid Chat is $0 whether you use the hosted app or self-host it. No tiers to compare, no calculator, no “contact sales” column. Every one of the 91 features below is in the free product, for every person on your team, forever.

The only plan

$0per person
per month

Every feature, for everyone on your team, with no limit on how long you keep your history. There is no second tier to move up to — this is the whole product.

Try free Or self-host it

Self-hosted or hosted: $0. No credit card, no sales call and no per-seat charge.

Unlimited, and never counted

People in your workspace
Messages you send
Message history you keep
Channels you create
Integrations you connect
Admin and governance features
API calls you make

Things that do not exist here

No per-seat invoice
No 90-day history limit
No feature gated behind a tier
No trial that expires
No credit card, ever
No sales call

Everything included

All 91 features. All on the free plan.

This is the full list, not a highlights reel. Nothing below is marked “Pro”, because there is no Pro.

Messaging

The part your team lives in, built in full rather than sketched.

Public and private channels
Channel browser with public previews
Archived channels, join and leave
1:1 direct messages
Group DMs up to nine people
No duplicate conversations, ever
Threads with reply counts
Participant facepiles
“Also send to channel” broadcasts
Message editing and soft deletes
Optimistic rendering
Idempotent sends

Included · $0

Formatting and mentions

Plain text with stable tokens, so renames never rewrite history.

Bold, italic, strikethrough
Inline code and code fences
Quotes, lists and links
Mention people and groups
@here, @channel, @everyone
Channel links (#design)
Emoji reactions with full picker
Skin tones and frequently used
Workspace custom emoji

Included · $0

Files, pins and Later

Private S3-compatible storage: 10 MiB per file, 100 MiB of active files per workspace, cleaned after 15 days.

Drag, drop and paste uploads
Inline image rendering
Per-conversation file lists
Pinned messages
Saved items (“Later”)
Message sharing and forwarding
Permalinks to any message
Reminders
Scheduled send

Included · $0

Navigation and awareness

Unreads you can trust, and a way back to anything you have seen.

Unread counts and mention badges
“New messages” divider
Mark unread from any message
Activity feed
Threads view and All unreads
Drafts and sent, Files, People
Quick switcher (⌘K)
Full keyboard shortcuts (⌘/)
↑ to edit your last message
Presence: active, away, DND
Custom status with expiry
Typing indicators
Sidebar starring and muting
Custom sidebar sections
Per-conversation notification levels

Included · $0

Search

Postgres full-text search across everything, with real operators.

in:#channel
from:@person
has:file and has:link
is:pinned
before:, after:, during:
Sort by recency or relevance
Unlimited history searched

Included · $0

Realtime

An accelerator, not a dependency — if the socket dies the app still works.

WebSocket live updates
Room-level authorization
Presence heartbeats
Typing relay per composer
Redis pub/sub fan-out
Multi-process ready

Included · $0

Administration

The governance that Slack puts behind its higher tiers.

Roles: owner, admin, member, guest
Guests scoped to their channels
Member management
Email invitations
Reusable invite links with limits
Workspace settings
Channel management
User groups
Audit log
Per-channel posting policy
Default auto-join channels
Private conversion
Message retention policies
Per-workspace read-only mode
Data export (JSONL + CSV + files)

Included · $0

Integrations and API

The web client has no private endpoints. It calls /api, and so can you.

Incoming webhooks
App identities for bots
API keys with explicit scopes
Per-key rate limits
Key rotation and expiry
Audited key creation
GET /api/meta/routes discovery
Generated OpenAPI 3.1 document
19 slash commands

Included · $0

Preferences

The small things that decide whether people stay in the app.

Light, dark or match the OS
Comfortable or compact density
12h and 24h clocks
Enter-to-send toggle
Highlight keywords
Desktop notifications and sounds
Quiet hours in your timezone
Session management
Responsive drawer layout on phones

Included · $0

Questions

The ones people ask about free.

What is the catch?

There isn’t a pricing one. Fluid Chat is open source, so the code that runs the hosted app is the same code you can clone and run yourself. The honest limitation is scope rather than billing: there are no huddles, no voice or video, no Slack Connect and no SSO/SAML — those are called out on the home page rather than sold as an upgrade.

Will you add a paid tier later?

The project is built to be self-hosted, and a self-hosted install has nothing to meter — no seats to count and no licence keys to check. If a hosted plan with support ever appears, it would sit alongside the free product rather than carve features out of it, and the source stays open either way.

Is the hosted app really unlimited?

Members, messages, channels and history are not counted. Uploads are capped at 10 MiB each and 100 MiB of active files per workspace. Uploads expire after 15 days and workspace exports after 7 days to keep S3 costs manageable for the free hosted version. If you self-host, you can change or remove those restrictions.

Do I need a credit card to start?

No. There is no card field anywhere in the product, no trial clock and no upgrade prompt, because there is nothing to upgrade to.

What happens to my data if I leave?

You export it. Data export produces JSONL, CSV and a file manifest covering the whole workspace, and it is available to every workspace on the free plan — which is to say, every workspace.

Can I run this for a company?

Yes. Roles, guest scoping, audit logging, retention policies, API keys with scopes and per-workspace read-only mode are all included. Those are the features most chat products reserve for their business tiers.

Something not covered? Open an issue.

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Create a workspace in the hosted app, or clone the repo onto your own Postgres. Both cost the same.

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