Free vs paid — what costs nothing, what does not
The free version has no trial period, no row cap and no import limits; the paid version unlocks nine "exit" capabilities. This page draws the line, and explains activating, what expiry does, and whether your data is ever held hostage.
The short version
- The free version has no trial, never expires, and needs no account. Building tables, calculating, joining tables, charting, and one dashboard are all free, with no row limit.
- What money buys is "take the result away" and "let it run by itself": full export, the API, write-back, automation, AI, more than one dashboard, version history.
- Paid or not, all your data can be packed up and carried off at any time (an encrypted
.tdbkbackup, with no row cap). We do not hold data hostage.
The comparison
| Capability | Free | Paid |
|---|---|---|
| Rows / tables / file size | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Excel / CSV / paste / JSON import | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Field formulas, the five panels (Sumif / Match / Split / Merge / if), cross-table lookups | All of it | All of it |
| Every view and chart type, pivot tables | All of it | All of it |
| Dashboards | One | Unlimited |
| Excel / CSV export | First 1,000 rows per table | Everything |
| PDF / Excel report / branded template export | — | ✓ |
| Data API (serving a table to other systems) | — | ✓ |
| Data connection write-back (API / database) | Read in only | Read in and write back |
| Workflow automation (scheduled / on change / conditional) | — | ✓ |
| Every AI feature (chat, panel suggestions, AI formulas, image-to-table, AI and web functions) | — | ✓ (plus your own API key) |
| 30-day version history | — | ✓ |
Encrypted .tdbk backup and restore |
✓ | ✓ |
| Priority support | — | ✓ |
AI is a single paid capability, and the free version cannot use any part of it. Chat, the suggestions inside the panels, AI-written formulas, image-to-table and the AI and web functions all go through the same backend route, and a free build gets "AI plugins are a paid feature — Google Search, AI.Generate, Web.Crawl and the other AI functions need a paid license." After paying you still have to bring your own API key; the model bill goes straight from you to the provider, with nothing added and nothing routed through us.
Prices
| Plan | Price | Suits |
|---|---|---|
| Monthly | $7.99 / month | Trying it for a month, or one project |
| Yearly | $49 / year (saves $46 against monthly) | Ongoing use |
| Lifetime | $99 once | Never thinking about it again |
Buy from the pricing page. You can also get there from the licence badge at the bottom left of the app. The pricing page is authoritative on price.
Activating after you buy
The licence key arrives by email, shaped like A1B2C3D4-E5F6G7H8-I9J0K1L2-M3N4O5P6 — four groups of eight, joined by hyphens.
- Open Desktop settings (below Setting in the sidebar, or Cmd+, / Ctrl+,) → License.
- Paste the whole key, hyphens included, under Enter your license key and click Activate.
- The data engine restarts once, five to ten seconds, and the paid features are open.
One licence is active on one computer at a time, but moving is self-service: Deactivate this computer on the old machine, then activate the same key on the new one. Activation needs the internet once; after that offline use is fine. The error messages and what to do about them are in Licensing.
What hitting the paywall looks like
- Exporting a table past the limit: you get the first 1,000 rows and a clear message — "Free exports the first 1,000 rows. Upgrade to export everything." You never get a silently truncated file.
- A second dashboard, automation, AI: a window explains which paid capability it is and offers the purchase link.
- The prompts dismiss, and nothing stops you carrying on with the free parts.
What expiry does
When a monthly or yearly plan lapses the app returns to the free version: paid features lock, export goes back to 1,000 rows, and not one row of data is removed. .tdbk backups keep working. Renew, activate again, and everything comes back.
Can I get all my data out without paying?
Yes. Desktop settings → Data backup → Export .tdbk file has no row limit at all. That file only opens in TableDI — it is the exit for "take my data off this computer", not the exit for "turn it into Excel". Full export in Excel or CSV shape is the paid item.