What is Dify?

Dify is a free, open-source platform for building LLM-powered applications without writing backend code. Think of it as a visual IDE for AI — you connect models, prompts, tools, and data sources through a drag-and-drop interface, then deploy as a chatbot, API, or automated workflow.

With over 80,000 GitHub stars and used by tens of thousands of developers and companies worldwide, Dify has become the go-to platform for teams who want to ship AI products fast. It supports 100+ LLMs including GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini, Llama, DeepSeek, and any OpenAI-compatible API.

Free Tier: Cloud vs Self-Hosted

Dify offers two ways to use the platform:

Option Cost Limits Best For

Dify Cloud (Sandbox) Free forever 200 message credits/day, 5 apps, 5 MB knowledge base Trying Dify without setup

Self-Hosted (Community) Free forever Unlimited apps, unlimited messages, unlimited users Production use, full control

Cloud Starter $59/month Unlimited apps, 10K credits/month Teams who don’t want to host

The real…