The best free feature request tool depends on which kind of free you're being offered. There are four: a free tier of a hosted product that ends once you grow, open source you host yourself, open core with the real features paywalled, and a free edition that never expires. Only one of those definitions holds up over time.
This page is one part of a larger guide. For the whole subject in one place, see feature request tools.
Kind one: a free tier of a hosted product
This is the most common kind, and the one most people mean by "free feature request tool". Canny.io, UserJot and Featurebase all give away a working product, capped on something that grows as you succeed.
Canny.io's free tier covers 25 tracked users. UserJot's free tier covers 2 boards. Featurebase's free tier covers 1 seat and 1 board. Nolt.io and Frill.co do not offer a free tier at all, only a trial: 10 days for Nolt.io, 14 for Frill.co.
The cap is the whole product. Cross it and the price you pay depends on what the tool counts. Canny.io counts tracked users, and its own pricing page defines that as anyone who posts, votes or comments. Tracked users accumulate permanently; the count only goes up. Cross your limit and Canny.io "automatically upgrade[s] you to the next tier" with a prorated charge, unless you set a spend limit, in which case it "will stop tracking feedback from new users" once that limit is hit. Both quotes are from Canny.io's own pricing page.
That is why the entry price is a bad guide to the real one. Canny.io's cheapest paid tier is $79 a month billed yearly, $948 a year. At 5,000 tracked users, on that same yearly billing, it is $1,079 a month. UserJot's entry tier is $29 a month, $348 a year, for 5 boards. Featurebase is priced per seat at $29 a month billed yearly, $348 a year per seat, so three colleagues is $1,044 a year before anything else. A board that works is a board that grows, and a board priced per user or per seat grows its own bill.
There is a second hidden cost worth knowing about before you outgrow the free tier: removing the vendor's own badge from your board. Featurebase sells badge removal as a $69 a month add-on, and only on its Professional tier ($59 a seat a month) or above, so removing a badge alone costs $828 a year. Canny.io puts badge removal on its Business tier only. Frill.co includes removing the tagline on every tier, but full white labelling is a separate add-on, included from its Growth tier at $136 a month billed yearly.
Kind two: open source you host yourself
This is the kind most people picture when they hear "open source feedback tool", and it is the one where the free part and the working part are genuinely different things. The licence is free. Running the software is not.
Fider is the largest project here: AGPL-3.0 licensed, 4,476 stars, 842 forks, last pushed 9 August 2026. Running it means Docker, PostgreSQL 12 or later, and your own SMTP provider or Amazon SES. What it gives you in return is real: roadmap, voting and private boards, with no changelog feature at all. Two things have changed underneath the same project, though. getfider.com now redirects to fider.io, a commercial hosted service run by Northern App Labs Ltd, a UK company, with its own pricing page, and Fider's own documentation now says "the easiest way to get started with Fider is to use our Cloud Instance." The best-known self-hosted option in the category markets hosting first.
Quackback (AGPL-3.0, 237 stars) and ClearFlask (Apache-2.0, 448 stars, last pushed 5 August 2026) are the smaller, newer alternatives, both genuinely self-hostable with no commercial pull in the other direction.
The operating cost is not nothing. A competitor's own costed comparison of self-hosting Fider puts infrastructure at $70 to $125 a month before any engineering time, plus five to ten hours a month once traffic is real. That number, and the rest of what each of these four projects gives you, is compared in full in the open source options compared.
One warning belongs in every list like this one: Astuto is dead. Its repository was archived read-only on 8 February 2026, its maintainer posted an end-of-life notice pointing people to Fider, and its hosted service had run for under a year before shutting. Several roundups of open-source feedback tools still list it as live. It is not, and deploying it now means deploying something nobody will patch.
Kind three: open core, where the free build is missing the product
Open core looks like kind two at first glance: a real repository, a real licence, something you can self-host. The difference is what the free build actually does once it is running.
LogChimp has 1,119 stars, and its licence is AGPLv3 with two enterprise directories carved out under a separate one. Boards, Roadmaps and Comments, the parts most people picture when they picture a feature request board, are Pro-only at $24 a month billed yearly, on the build you host and run yourself. What the free self-hosted tier gives you is posts, customers, one admin role and a custom domain. You provide the server, the database and the maintenance, and you still pay a monthly fee to unlock the feature request board itself.
That is the trap of open core: the effort of self-hosting without a free product at the end of it.
| Kind | What's free | What's not | Cost once you outgrow it |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hosted free tier (Canny.io, UserJot, Featurebase) | A working product up to a cap | Everything past 25 tracked users, 2 boards, or 1 seat and board | $29 to $79 a month entry, rising with tracked users or seats; Canny.io reaches $1,079/mo billed yearly at 5,000 tracked users |
| Open source, self-hosted (Fider, ClearFlask, Quackback) | The licence and the full code | The server, database, email and patching | Roughly $70 to $125 a month in infrastructure by one competitor's own costing, plus ongoing hours |
| Open core (LogChimp) | Posts, customers, one admin role, custom domain | Boards, Roadmaps, Comments | $24 a month billed yearly, on top of hosting it yourself |
| Free edition, no expiry (Docket) | Bugs and feature requests, roadmap, changelog, FAQ, testimonials, custom domain, unlimited products | Automated notifications, agentic replies, the feedback widget, badge removal | $99 one time for Pro, if you ever want those |
Kind four: a free edition that does not expire
The fourth kind is the one nobody puts in these lists, because it doesn't fit the other three: not a capped trial of a hosted product, not a repository you have to run yourself, and not a paywall sitting inside the open-source build. Docket's free edition never expires, needs no card and no account, and it is what this site itself runs on.
It includes bugs and feature requests, a roadmap, a changelog, an FAQ, testimonials, a custom domain, guest posting and manual replies, with unlimited products on every tier, free included. There is no server to run because it ships as static files plus two small endpoints, which is also why there is no operating cost to weigh against the licence, the way there is with kind two.
It is also honestly incomplete, worth being direct about who it is wrong for. The free edition has no automatic update checker, no agentic reply workflows, no automated notifications to email, Slack or Discord, no embeddable feedback widget, and no way to remove Docket's own badge. If your team wants a tool that pings Slack when a customer votes, drafts replies on its own, or just needs the badge gone, that is Pro at $99 one time, or Studio at $249, with a $150 difference to move between them later and no deadline. The comparison in what feedback tools actually cost covers the full breakdown against every tool in this piece.
One payment, no subscription, unlimited products.
How to tell which kind you're being offered
Read the pricing page before you read the feature list.
A number on the free tier that counts something you don't control yet, a seat, a board, a tracked user, means kind one: fine to start on, expensive to stay on.
Setup docs that recommend a hosted "Cloud" option before they explain self-hosting mean kind two turning into something else: the code is free, the company wants you on the paid version anyway.
A self-hosted build whose install instructions still gate core screens behind a monthly fee is kind three, whatever the README calls it.
And a free tier with no seat cap, no board cap and no card required, that plainly lists what it lacks rather than hiding it, is the fourth kind: the rarest claim in the category, and the only one worth checking twice before you believe it.
Frequently asked questions
What's the difference between free and open source in this category?
Free usually means a capped tier of a hosted product, like Canny.io's 25 tracked users or Featurebase's 1 seat and board. Open source means the code itself carries a free licence, like Fider's AGPL-3.0, but running it still costs money and time: a server, a database, email, and patching, which one competitor's own costing puts at $70 to $125 a month.
Is there a feature request tool that's free and never expires?
Docket's free edition doesn't expire, needs no card and no account, and includes bugs and feature requests, a roadmap, a changelog, an FAQ, testimonials and a custom domain, with unlimited products. It leaves out automated notifications, agentic replies, the feedback widget and badge removal, which sit behind the one-time $99 Pro tier.
Why isn't Astuto on this list as a live option?
Because it's dead. Its repository was archived read-only on 8 February 2026, its maintainer posted an end-of-life notice pointing people to Fider, and its hosted version had run for under a year before shutting. It still appears on older roundups; check the archive date, not the star count, before trusting any listicle here.
Is Fider still genuinely free to self-host?
The code is: AGPL-3.0, actively maintained, last pushed 9 August 2026. But getfider.com now redirects to fider.io, a commercial hosted service, and Fider's own docs recommend that Cloud Instance first. Self-hosting is still real and free; it's just no longer what the project leads with.
What does "open core" mean for a feature request tool?
It means the free, self-hosted build is missing the actual product. LogChimp is the clearest example: Boards, Roadmaps and Comments, the core of a feature request board, are Pro-only at $24 a month billed yearly, even on the version you host and run yourself. The free tier only gives you posts, customers, one admin role and a custom domain.