Over the past few months, Replit.com has changed their pricing drastically to the point where it is
simply not
viable.
We, along with many others, have used Replit for years, however, at its current point we are all looking for
alternatives.
This website covers what happened, a comparison, alternatives, and community quotes to give perspective
on the current issues of the platform.
The cutback of "Always On" instances from five to one hit Hacker Plan users hard. This shift took many projects offline, with users unable to pay the extra $292.20/year for 4 more always on repls.
Similarly, reducing the number of Boosts included in the Hacker Plan from five to one, and reducing base repl specs to the same level as the free plan, unless you were actively inside the Replit workspace, left users wondering how Replit Hacker plan could anymore be a justified expense.
UPDATE: The Hacker plan is no longer available. The only option for private repls and other boosts is the $20/month "Core" plan
Replit's enduring focus on AI and LLMs have put them in a state of throwing money at a losing battle.
Trending Repls have been heavily focused on AI, as well as the company's social media accounts & most heavily, their CEO.
However, it must be said, integrating AI has always been one of the main goals of Replit, right from day 1. It just feels overemphasised currently. AI is undoubtedly a very interesting space in computer science right now, however it's not the only one. A balance should be made such that AI exists within the product and community, but is not such an overwhelming majority of the focus as it is now.
Replit's price hike for power-ups like Boosts and the Always On feature greatly affected its large student and budding coder user base. The increased costs, from 2 to 70 cycles/day, for a Boost, and 2 to 20 cycles/day, for the Always On feature, made these features less accessible, impacting the budget community.
Replit has previously been very focused on their platform being used for new coders, with their motto "Bringing the next billion software creators online". However, this target audience has changed recently, with low budget beginner, student, and hobby developers being pushed away by the increased pricing.
The first offender of their Deployments is Reserved VMs. For the lowest tier, you get a CPU with 2.199GHz clock speed, 1GiB of RAM, and 10GiB of outbound data transfer.
On platforms such as DigitalOcean and AWS, they can be way cheaper.
Replit deployments also don't have live SSH, reserved IPs, choice of OS, UDP, firewall rules, and has an overall lack of customisation.
Replit's static deployments is just that - static site hosting. Just one small issue, and pay attention - all of these sites below are free.
On April 7, 2023, Replit set egress limits across all plans. Aimed at controlling outbound data transfer, this move faced backlash, especially from the Free tier users.
With limits set at 10 GiB for Free, 50 GiB for Hacker, and 100 GiB for Pro tiers, many found them restrictive. Particularly those on the free plan, hosting popular projects.
The final blow came when Replit announced that your repls could only stay online when you are actively within the workspace, now Replit Deployments stand as Replit's only hosting option.
This decision seemed to counter Replit's user-friendly ethos, sparking widespread confusion and shock within the community. Especially as they promised to never force users to move away from pingers to a paid product, which is exactly was just been done. Users can no longer ping their hosted repl's repl.co url, and instead must move to the paid deployments product to continue hosting on Replit.
Replit proudly shows over $40,000 open in bounties, but when analysing further over 175 "open" bounties are over 4 months old, leaving an estimated $15k in bounties that aren't stale. 64.5% of open bounties are over 4 months old, last updated 11 Oct.
The 16k+ member Replit Discord community fell to bits after the moderation team wasn't paid any more than their Hacker plan, all nerfed and shiny at $7/month. Understandably, moderators striked, causing Replit to abandon control of the community server altogether.
The Replit Reps program was abandoned too, with it disbanding after only 1 and a half cohort cycles.
Jams were reduced from events like Kajam and #madewithreplit to AI hackathons that a 14 year old won with school & no prior experience. Prize pools have dropped from over $10k to around $2k per event, lowering the incentive.
| Replit | DigitalOcean | AWS | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Transfer ($6/month VM) | 10 GiB free, $0.1/GiB | 1,000 GiB free, $0.01/GiB | $0.08 - $0.2/GiB |
| Storage ($6/month VM) | 10 GB | 25 GB | Depends, varies wildly |
| vCPUs ($6/month VM) | 0.25 | 1 | Around 2 |
| RAM ($6/month VM) | 1GB | 1GB | 1GB |
| Database (per GB) | 10 GB for $1/day | $0.5-$1/GB (higher, cheaper) | $0.115/GB |
| Accessibility | Very easy | Intermediate, tutorials | Expert, easy to lose money |
| Replit | Github | CF Pages | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Storage | Account-based, $0.15/GB extra | 1GB | 500GB (absolute max) |
| Transfer | Account-based, $0.1/GiB extra | 100GiB | Unlimited |
Cyclic.sh, Credit: python660
Neocities (inserted by @RixTheTyrunt)
Fly.io, Credit: bddylol
Datalix.eu, Credit: atomic2ds
These alternatives offer a range of features for coding, collaboration, deployment, and experimentation, catering to various development needs and preferences.
"I am highly disappointed I resonate with the concern about introducing premium subscriptions and the potential challenges it may pose for the teen user base. Many of us, being part of this group, may find it challenging to access premium features without relying on our parents’ cards. It would be great if Replit could explore options that allow for free deployment with certain restrictions, making it more inclusive for all users. Replit should not just throw away its free users. Is it how they will support the next 1 BILLION users ? By forcing them to pay? We all have no option but to leave replit" ~ prakarsh17-coder(replit)/infinotiver(github)
"I've already moved a ton of stuff to DigitalOcean. I won't be coming back. I've had chats with team members, and it's clear that nothing's changing. I'll stay in the community, maybe use it for prototyping, but that's about it." ~ coding398
"Whilst Replit may be the most convenient option, you're paying too much for tha convenience and they don't provide you with enough customisability of what you pay for." ~ DillonB07
"The young aspiring developers that made Replit the company it is today ultimately have been abandoned and kicked to the curb by the platform with rising costs and and restrictions." ~ zavexeon
"You will need either money or a ton of cycles to host a site on Replit. Either one could be acquired by your mom’s credit card, however you could also get cycles by completing bounties or getting tipped on your Repls." ~ CoderElijah
"So, what? Replit is just not free anymore? Hosting on Replit was already frustrating enough with the slow speeds and the sleepy repls, and now you’re just pulling the plug entirely? Wow." ~ wutadamyt
"I used to use Replit a lot. But now, I can't find myself using it in the near future. I don't like what Replit has done to the platform, and I am in the process of switching over to better, cheaper cloud providers." ~ datkat21
"I was a power-user a little while back. Migration would be hell. I have tons of websites to port over, and it won't be fun. And that's what was amazing about Replit, you could basically make anything you wanted at any time, at any rate. It's what kept my motivation super high, Now that motivation has dried up." ~ EnZon3
"Replit once said that they will bring the next billion software creators online. Recently they have been doing the opposite. It seems now that their focus is on the professional and buisness side of things. Especially with the AI that they are investing so much into." ~ bddylol
"Well it was fun while it lasted. Replit already had a lot of issues, but this is the final nail in the coffin. Thats all I have to say." ~ Kurizu
"We have to pay for repls now... I mean, I usually make a lot of repls but now I have to pay to make each one? We could obviously tell that Replit is literally greedy that they want to make even repls cost money." ~ Buhron
"Replit was the best when other companies weren't using it, but now they think that they can push their actual users, the people that made Replit into.. well Replit, into an erupting volcano because other companies are using it. I really hate corporate f**ks and now one of my favorite companies is turning into one. I bet Replit's income is gonna fall at Mach 9 after this sh*t. Goodbye, Replit, and I do NOT thank you." ~ NullClock (Cubic)
"Replit was the platform for which my coding journey started. It was superior to any rival platform that I knew of. Recently, my Guilded bot which is showcased and acknowledged by Guilded itself hit 500 servers. Looks like the celebration isn't gonna last long as I may have to shut it down after December. Thank you Replit, for the contribution." ~ ServerDeveloper
"I liked Replit alot, I really did. But I guess companies these days just get to throw their users out like trash. Thanks alot Replit, have a good downfall." ~ Mixxer (ByteNetwork)
"Replit used to be a wonderful place with a wonderful community. Now it's dead. I HAD to leave Replit. So many of my projects relied on databases like Sqlite and JSON, which the new Deployments feature doesn't support. Most of my apps and websites have gone down, simply because they didn't give let us use .repl.co domains at least until they had persistent storage support. This, and so many other problems have forced me to leave Replit for the most part." ~ hg0428
Want to contribute to this site? Submit a PR!
This is in no way an attack on any of the Replit employees - moreso the pricing & direction.
Want something removed that's yours? Reach out to [email protected]
Thanks to the many contributors for helping with the website.
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Created by coding398.