Dify Pricing: Sandbox Limits, Paid Plans and How Credits Are Counted
・ Employee Store Operations
Summary
Dify Cloud pricing consists of a plan fee per workspace and message credits for using models. The trial-oriented Sandbox plan has limits on credits and the number of apps. This article explains the plan differences, how credits are counted, and the costs charged separately.
We checked the prices and terms in this article against the Dify pricing page and official docs on October 2, 2026. Prices are in US dollars and exclude tax. Prices and plans may change. Before you sign up, check the latest information in the sources at the end.
Dify pricing differs between the cloud version (Dify Cloud) and self-hosting. On Dify Cloud, you choose a plan per workspace and pay for model usage with message credits or your own API key. For self-hosting on your own server, there is the Community edition.
Dify Pricing Overview: Cloud and Self-Hosting
On the pricing page, Dify Cloud has three plans: Sandbox, Professional, and Team. Self-hosting has Community and Enterprise.
| Type | Plan | As shown on the pricing page |
|---|---|---|
| Dify Cloud | Sandbox | No charge |
| Dify Cloud | Professional | $590 per year, or $59 per month, per workspace |
| Dify Cloud | Team | $1,590 per year, or $159 per month, per workspace |
| Self-hosting | Community | No charge |
| Self-hosting | Enterprise | Custom (contact sales) |
Dify Cloud prices exclude tax, which may be added at checkout. Paying annually is 17% cheaper, according to the pricing page. Billing is per workspace. Each plan sets the number of members, available features, and usage limits.
What the Sandbox Plan Includes and Its Limits
Sandbox is a plan for trying Dify's core features. The pricing page lists it at no charge. The main limits are as follows.
- Message credits: 200
- 1 workspace, 1 member, 5 apps
- 50 knowledge documents, 50MB of knowledge storage
- 10 knowledge requests per minute
- 3,000 trigger events, up to 2 triggers per workflow
- 30 days of log retention
- Up to 5,000 Dify API calls per month
The official docs say Sandbox credits are a one-time 200 with no monthly refill. Paid plans get credits every month.
The knowledge request limit is the combined number per minute of actions such as creating or updating datasets, uploading documents, and searching knowledge. In the pricing page's example, if you run hit tests 10 times in a row within a minute on Sandbox, actions such as creating datasets and uploading documents are temporarily limited for the next minute.
What the limits mean
- Trigger events: the number of times a workflow started automatically from a plugin, schedule, or webhook trigger
- Knowledge storage: used by documents imported with the High Quality indexing method. When you reach the limit, you cannot upload new documents
- Annotations: a feature for manually correcting responses so that set questions return set answers. Available only in Chat apps; Sandbox allows up to 10
Apps that use a lot of knowledge, or workflows that run often via webhooks, reach Sandbox limits quickly. When you try it out, first estimate the document volume and number of calls you expect in production.
If you cancel a paid plan, the workspace returns to Sandbox after the paid period ends.
Paid Plan Differences
| Item | Professional | Team |
|---|---|---|
| Annual billing | $590 per year per workspace | $1,590 per year per workspace |
| Monthly billing | $59 per month | $159 per month |
| Message credits | 5,000 per month | 10,000 per month |
| Members | 3 | 50 |
| Apps | 50 | 200 |
| Knowledge documents | 500 | 1,000 |
| Knowledge storage | 5GB | 20GB |
| Knowledge requests | 100 per minute | 1,000 per minute |
| Trigger events | 20,000 per month | Unlimited |
| Annotations | 2,000 | 5,000 |
| Log retention | Unlimited | Unlimited |
| Dify API | No call limit | No call limit |
- 200 creditsSandbox1-time only
- 5,000 creditsProfessionalMonthly
- 10,000 creditsTeamMonthly
Sandbox credits are 1-time only; Professional and Team get them monthly
The pricing page positions Professional for individual developers and small teams, and Team for mid-sized teams. Professional and Team also support load balancing, which spreads load by registering multiple API keys for the same model.
Changing and canceling plans
- Upgrading: takes effect immediately. You pay the prorated difference for the rest of the current billing period
- Downgrading: takes effect at the start of the next billing period. Until then, you keep the current plan
- Canceling and changing payment methods: open the Stripe billing portal from Billing in settings
- Only workspace owners and admins can make changes
What Message Credits Are
Message credits let you use models from OpenAI, Anthropic, Gemini, xAI, Tongyi, and others inside Dify without your own API key. The official docs also call them AI credits.
How credits are counted
Each AI response uses credits. One response means one model call (one input and one output). It counts as one response regardless of the number of tokens used. The credits deducted per response vary by model, with larger models using more. The pricing page lists the number for each model.
When you run out of credits, you can switch to your own API key. Setting Usage Priority in the model provider settings lets you choose whether credits or your API key is used first. You can also use credits first and move to your API key when they run out.
Credits work only with models from supported providers. For unsupported providers, install them and use them with your own account and API key.
Model API Fees Are Charged Separately
When you register your own API key, the provider bills you for model usage. This is separate from the Dify plan fee. The official docs say keys you add can be used across the whole workspace and are billed to your own provider account. Only workspace owners and admins can register and manage keys.
Providers price models by tokens. Anthropic and Google's Gemini API list prices per 1 million tokens. Dify credits count responses, but API key billing depends on tokens. If you have a model read a long document, even one response uses more tokens and costs more.
We explain how to estimate costs in AI agent costs. We cover basic Dify operations in how to use Dify.
Costs of Self-Hosting
The pricing page lists the self-hosted Community edition at no charge. It includes all core features released in the public repository, with one workspace. You use it under the Dify Open Source License. The pricing page positions it for open-source enthusiasts, individual developers, and non-commercial projects.
Server guidelines
The minimum requirements in the official Docker Compose setup guide are at least 2 CPU cores and at least 4GiB of memory. Docker Compose 2.24.0 or later is required. On macOS, the guide says to assign at least 2 virtual CPUs and at least 8GiB of memory to the Docker virtual machine. On startup, 7 core services such as api, worker, and web, plus 8 components such as PostgreSQL, Redis, and nginx, run as containers.
With self-hosting, instead of paying Dify, you cover server costs, updates, backups, and incident response yourself. Model usage fees are billed separately to your own API key.
How do you want to use Dify?
Licensing when you sell
The Dify license allows commercial use. However, operating a multi-tenant environment (1 tenant equals 1 workspace) with Dify source code without written permission requires a commercial license. The same applies if you use the Dify frontend and remove or change the logo or copyright notice in the console or apps. We explain this in detail in Dify commercial use.
On Employee Store, you can list AI agents, including Dify workflows. There is no listing fee or upfront cost. The fee is 20% of the deal amount and applies only when a deal closes. For details, see the seller guide.
FAQ
- Can I use Dify without paying?
- Dify Cloud Sandbox is listed at no charge on the pricing page. Message credits are a one-time 200, and you can have up to 5 apps. The self-hosted Community edition is also listed at no charge, but you cover server costs.
- What happens when I use up my message credits?
- If you register your own API key, you can keep using models with that key. Usage Priority in the model provider settings decides whether credits or your API key is used first. The provider bills you for key usage.
- Are there discounts for students and teachers?
- There is Dify for Education. When current students, teachers, and staff of educational institutions verify with a school email address, the discount covers the full cost of one year of annual Professional. In this case, credits are still a one-time 200, the same as Sandbox. Verification must be renewed every year.
