A $750/mo tool that lifts hook rate across every ad we run is cheap. A $19/mo tool nobody opens is expensive. Price is shown as a fact and carries zero weight in the score. The only gate is: can we try it before we pay?
🎁 Free trial — anyone can start it. 🎓 Student — free or heavily discounted on an education plan, which is a real lane for us. Use the segmented filter to see either list on its own. ⚠ Pay to look means neither, and that caps a tool at Watch however good it is.
A script fetches each pricing page and records what it says, with the date on
the card. Where it says needs a human the page renders its plans in
JavaScript and the script genuinely cannot see them — that is not the same as
"no free trial", and it never gets written up as one.
SheerID gates Google, Perplexity, Canva, Notion and Cursor. A plain
.edu address is enough for Figma, JetBrains and Autodesk. Each card
names its verifier and its catch — several are a discount, not free
(Adobe), and one forbids commercial use outright (Autodesk).
Google's student AI year is free — and takes a card up front, then renews at $19.99/mo. That shape is common. Read the Watch out line before the pricing.
Hacker News launches (keyless API, tied to the lanes we run), the GitHub Student Pack's 83 offers, and hand-curation. The raw sweep feed is hidden by default — flip Untriaged on to comb through it. It grows on every sweep — the sibling lane for open-source code is Repo Radar.