Short answer: free AI plans stop in three different places. An Leakly free plan stops after one audit a month with three leaks unlocked. An Ancher free plan stops at 100 credits a month. A HireKey free plan stops at a small set of sessions for resumes, interviews and voice coaching.
This MPAT guide explains those three free-tier shapes — audit quotas, monthly credits and session limits — using the three products that launched on the board on 12 October 2026. Prices were re-read on each vendor's own pricing page the same day. It is compiled from those pages, not a hands-on test, and there are no scores or ratings.
What launched on MPAT on 12 October 2026?
Three products went live (or were queued to go live) on the same UTC day, each doing a different job:
Leakly (morning) runs a conversion audit on public pages, ranks the leaks with evidence and unlocks fixes by plan.
Ancher (afternoon) saves articles, videos, social posts and podcasts into a personal knowledge base you can search by meaning and draft from.
HireKey (evening) is a recruiter-informed job-search copilot for resume tailoring, interview practice, live voice coaching, cover letters and company briefs.
A growth marketer, a researcher and a job seeker would each buy one of these, not all three. So this is not a feature roundup. What they share is the buyer question every freemium AI page now asks you to answer: where does free stop, and is that stop an audit count, a credit balance or a session quota?
Where do free AI plans stop on today's three tools?
USD, checked 12 October 2026 on the Leakly pricing page, the Ancher pricing page and the HireKey pricing section.
Audit quota | 1 site, 5 pages per audit, 1 audit a month, 3 leaks unlocked | Plus $39/month billed yearly, or $49 monthly | Every leak unlocked, 10 audits a month, monthly re-audits, PDF export | |
Monthly credits | 100 credits a month; cost per action not published | Digest $5.99/month, or $59.99 billed yearly ($5/month effective) | 5,000 credits a month and email support | |
Session limits | 5 resume tailor, 5 interview practice, 2 live voice, 5 letters, 5 briefs a month | Premium $39/month | 50 / 50 / 10 of those sessions, unlimited letters and briefs, pipeline insights |
Where does Leakly's free audit quota stop?
Leakly meters work in audits, not in tokens. On the Leakly pricing page, Free is $0 forever: one site, five pages per audit, one audit a month, a Conversion Score, and three leaks fully unlocked with evidence and a fix. The rest of the leak list stays locked. Audits are manual. There is no history, PDF export or alert.
Plus, at $39 a month billed yearly ($468 a year) or $49 billed monthly, keeps one site but raises the ceiling to 25 pages per audit and 10 audits a month, unlocks every leak, adds monthly re-audits, history and audit diffs, and PDF export. Pro, at $79 a month billed yearly ($948 a year) or $99 monthly, covers three sites, 100 pages per audit, 60 audits a month, three seats, weekly re-audits, regression alerts, analytics that put revenue on each leak, and three competitors watched. Enterprise is custom.
The free stop is therefore a hard monthly audit count plus a content lock. You can see that an audit ran and that a score exists, but you cannot keep improving one site on Free: after the first free audit in a month, you wait. Leakly's own FAQ says the audit is free and that paid plans start at $39 a month billed yearly. The same audit engine runs on every plan; paid plans add monitoring, unlocked leaks and measured impact.
Where does Ancher's free credit balance stop?
Ancher meters work in credits. On the Ancher pricing page, Free is always $0 with 100 credits a month, all core features and community support. Digest is $5.99 a month billed monthly, or $5 a month when billed yearly ($59.99 a year), with 5,000 credits and email support. Pro is $19.99 a month billed monthly, or $15 a month when billed yearly ($179.99 a year), with 20,000 credits, priority support and early access. The pricing page HTML defaults to the yearly view, so the $5 and $15 figures are the ones that render first; the monthly amounts come from the vendor's shipped pricing code (monthCents 599 and 1999), as recorded on MPAT's Ancher listing.
The free stop is a monthly credit ceiling. What is missing from every page we re-read is the burn rate: Ancher does not publish how many credits a save, a meaning search or a draft costs. Without that number, 100 credits a month is a real limit you cannot size before you sign up. Digest multiplies the free balance by 50; Pro multiplies it by 200. Until the vendor publishes a rate card, the only honest way to budget is to start on Free, watch the balance and upgrade when 100 credits a month is no longer enough.
Where does HireKey's free session limit stop?
HireKey meters work in named sessions. The HireKey pricing section (there is no separate /pricing URL; that path returns 404) lists Free at $0 a month with five Resume Tailoring sessions, five Interview Practice sessions, two Live Voice Coaching sessions, five Cover Letters and five Company Research Briefs a month, plus unlimited job application tracking. Premium is $39 a month with 50 / 50 / 10 of the three session types, unlimited cover letters and company briefs, unlimited tracking and Pipeline Intelligence. Premium buyers can also buy packs: five voice sessions for $9.99, or 15 resume tailors for $9.99.
The free stop is therefore several small monthly quotas in parallel. A job seeker who only needs the tracker never hits a wall. A job seeker who tailors five resumes and practices five interviews in the same week has used the free plan for that month on those features. Voice coaching is the tightest free meter at two sessions. Unlike Ancher, HireKey names the unit and the count on the public page, so you can plan a week of applications against the free allowances before you pay.
How do older free tiers on MPAT show the same stops?
Two tools already listed on MPAT make the same three shapes easier to recognise. Tactiq's free transcripts and AI credits give 10 transcripts and 5 AI credits a month on Free (MPAT check, 24 September 2026). Even paid Pro keeps a hard 10 AI credits a month while advertising unlimited transcripts, so the free-tier stop and the Pro stop are both credit caps, not recording caps. Unlimited AI credits begin at Team. That is the credit-shaped free stop, close to Ancher's shape, except Tactiq publishes that one credit usually covers one whole meeting.
Ayven's free credits and slots give 500 credits a month on Free, one credit per finished run, and pause when the balance runs out until the monthly reset or a pack (MPAT check, 11 October 2026). Paid Standard and Premium drop the credit meter entirely and sell concurrency slots instead. That is another credit-shaped free stop, with a clearer run-out rule than Ancher and a different paid upgrade path than HireKey's session multipliers.
How should you read a free AI plan before you sign up?
Name the meter. Ask whether free is limited by audits, credits, sessions, seats, history days or something else. Leakly, Ancher and HireKey each use a different meter on the same launch day.
Find the second limit. Leakly Free also locks most leaks. HireKey Free has five different session counts at once. Ancher Free has only one published number, but no burn rate beside it.
Check what paid actually buys. On Leakly, paid unlocks leaks and monitoring. On Ancher, paid multiplies credits. On HireKey, paid multiplies sessions and removes letter and brief caps. Do not assume every upgrade buys the same kind of headroom.
Check the run-out rule. Leakly's free audit count resets monthly. Ancher's credits reset monthly. HireKey's sessions reset monthly. Ayven pauses with "no surprise charges". If a page is silent on what happens when you hit the wall, treat that as a risk.
Prefer a published unit. HireKey and Tactiq name what one session or credit covers. Ancher does not. A free plan you cannot size is harder to trust than a smaller free plan you can count.
FAQ
Is Leakly free?
Yes, with a monthly audit limit. Free is $0 with one site, five pages per audit, one audit a month and three leaks unlocked. Plus starts at $39 a month billed yearly or $49 monthly, checked on the Leakly pricing page on 12 October 2026.
Is Ancher free?
Yes. Free is always $0 with 100 credits a month and all core features. Digest is $5.99 a month or $59.99 a year; Pro is $19.99 a month or $179.99 a year. The credit cost of each action is not published.
Is HireKey free?
Yes, with session caps. Free is $0 a month with five resume tailor, five interview practice, two live voice, five cover letters and five company briefs a month, plus unlimited application tracking. Premium is $39 a month.
What is the difference between an audit quota, a credit and a session?
An audit quota counts whole runs of a product, such as Leakly's one free audit a month. A credit is a vendor unit that may cover part of a job or a whole run, and may or may not have a public rate card. A session is a named use of one feature, such as HireKey's resume-tailoring sessions, counted separately from other features.
Which free plan lasts longest for light use?
It depends on the job. A marketer who only needs one Leakly audit a month can stay on Free indefinitely. A researcher who saves heavily into Ancher will burn 100 credits faster than the page can predict. A job seeker who applies slowly may stay inside HireKey's free session caps; one busy interview week will not.
Do these free allowances roll over?
None of the three vendor pages we re-read on 12 October 2026 describe unused free audits, free credits or free sessions rolling into the next month. Treat each month's free allowance as use-it-or-lose-it unless a later vendor update says otherwise.
Sources
Leakly's free audit limits, Plus and Pro prices, audit counts and unlock rules come from the Leakly pricing page. Ancher's free credit allowance, Digest and Pro prices and credit counts come from the Ancher pricing page and the monthly figures in the vendor's shipped pricing code, as recorded on MPAT's Ancher listing. HireKey's free session caps, Premium price and add-on packs come from the HireKey pricing section on the homepage. All three were re-read on 12 October 2026. Tactiq and Ayven free-tier figures come from MPAT's own listings with the check dates shown above.
