Freebuff vs Trae: a full free day vs an allowance that keeps shrinking
Trae moved to token billing in 2026, gives free users a "limited monthly allowance" in the slow queue, and turns AI chat off when it runs out. Freebuff is free, every day.
In short
- Our verdict: Freebuff. We make Freebuff, so weigh that, but every claim below links to a source you can check.
- Trae’s free plan is a "limited monthly allowance". Auto mode only, the standard queue, and when it runs out, "AI chat is unavailable for the rest of the month."
- Its 2026 switch to token billing shrank what users get. A two-year user on Trustpilot: "The usage was 3 Dollars, next month it was 2 dollars, and now 1 Dollar??"
- Trae scores 2.0 on Trustpilot, with 70% one-star reviews, many about billing.
- Freebuff is free for a full day of work, every day. Unlimited messages in every hour-long session, a published daily allowance with no monthly cap, and models that do not touch the allowance at all.
Trae, ByteDance’s AI IDE, won a lot of developers with a generous free plan. In 2026 it moved to token billing, and its users have been watching the allowance shrink since. If you want a coding agent you can use every day for free, without a monthly allowance that runs dry, Freebuff is the better choice.
At a glance
| Feature | Freebuff | Trae |
|---|---|---|
| Free plan | A full day of work, every day | "Limited monthly allowance" |
| Model choice on free | Pick your model | Auto mode only |
| When you run out | The allowance refills tomorrow | AI chat off for the rest of the month |
| How usage is counted | Hour-long sessions with unlimited messages | Tokens, at each model’s list price |
| Paid plans | Not needed for a full day | $20, $60 and $200 a month, plus $3 top-ups |
What Trae costs
Per Trae’s plans docs, "TRAE charges based on token usage", and each plan includes a monthly dollar allowance: Pro is $20 a month for $20 of usage, Pro+ $60 and Ultra $200, with a cheaper Lite plan in some countries. Usage past the allowance is "billed in $3 increments."
Free gets a "Limited monthly allowance" with "Auto mode only" and the "Standard queue". Trae’s billing FAQ says that after it is used up, "AI chat is unavailable for the rest of the month."
What Freebuff gives you for free
- Unlimited messages in every session. A session lasts an hour, and the agent can read, edit, test and retry as many times as it needs inside it.
- A published daily allowance with no monthly cap. Up to 30 hours a day in the US, and 21 in countries such as Canada, the UK and Germany. That is 10 hours a day of DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, refilled every day, so one heavy day never ends your month.
- Models that do not use it. Right now, Solar Mini 4 and Solar Pro 4 never touch your allowance, and new accounts in the US and other top-tier countries also get DeepSeek V4.1 Flash Fast without touching it.
- No editor to switch to. The CLI runs next to the editor you already use, and there is a desktop app for Mac, Windows and Linux, the web workspace, and apps for iOS and Android.
What Trae users are saying
Trae’s Trustpilot page scores 2.0 out of 5 from 27 reviews, 70% of them one star. Most of the recent ones are about the new billing:
- A shrinking allowance. August 2026: "The usage was 3 Dollars, next month it was 2 dollars, and now 1 Dollar??" from a user of two years who said they were quitting.
- Fast-burning tokens. Also August: "Tokens is consuming very fast."
- From 600 requests to under 20. A May 2026 reviewer who had 600 fast requests a month said a small task now cost $1.17 of their $20, leaving "less then 20 request per month".
- A day’s spend in hours. A March reviewer said the token model "burned $38 in one day", and a GitHub issue in April asks about "20.20 dollars in just 2.5 hours".
- Billing and support. Reviewers describe a charge 10 minutes before a free trial ended, a paid plan that never activated, and refund requests with no answer.
- Telemetry. In 2025, The Register reported that Trae made "around 500 calls within ~7 minutes" with telemetry supposedly off; Trae then clarified the toggle covered only the VS Code framework. Its privacy mode docs say chats and code "may be used for analytics, product improvement, and model training" unless privacy mode is on.
What Freebuff users are saying
For me probably one of the best inventions of the LLM era. I can’t describe how much benefits I got accessing these models for free and it helped my workflows to speed up without even spending a cent.
It has been reliable, useful, and has helped me complete complex technical and development work efficiently.
Where Trae is strong
Trae is a polished IDE for Mac and Windows, with a web version and an iOS app, a wide model lineup on paid plans, and agent features such as SOLO mode and cloud tasks. It still has a free plan, and existing subscribers get price protection on the new plans. If you want a full AI editor and do not mind token billing, it is a capable one.
Our verdict
Pick Freebuff. Trae’s free plan is a monthly allowance it does not size, with no model choice and the slow queue, and when it runs out, AI chat is off for the month. Freebuff gives you unlimited messages in every session and a published allowance that refills every day, in the terminal, on every desktop, in the browser and on your phone.
Try Freebuff for free
No card, no API key. `npm install -g freebuff`