
RAGFlow
Open-source RAG engine and agent platform: parse documents, search them and build chats, free to self-host.
Is RAGFlow free?
Yes, RAGFlow has a free plan. What you get: Open source (Apache 2.0): self-host free; cloud Free plan 500 credits/month. Free limits: 5 apps; 1 team member; 0.1 GB dataset storage. Watch out: you need an LLM and embedding model. Self-hosting the open-source version has no plan limits; hardware and LLM costs are yours. Verified on ragflow.io.
Free plan at a glance
- Includes
- 500 credits a month on the hosted Free plan
- 5 apps
- 1 team member
- 0.1 GB dataset storage
- No API key on the hosted Free plan
Self-hosting the open-source version has no plan limits; hardware and LLM costs are yours.
- Duration
- Free forever
How to get it free
Self-host- Clone the repository and start it with Docker Compose
- Open the web UI and log in
- Add an LLM under Model providers and create a dataset
Good to know
- You need an LLM and embedding model
- Hosted Free plan has no API key and small limits
ragflow.io, Checked Source
Overview
RAGFlow is an open-source retrieval-augmented generation engine with built-in document parsing, hybrid search and agent workflows. You can self-host it with Docker under Apache 2.0, or use the hosted cloud, which has a small free plan.
Free vs paid
| Free | Starter | |
|---|---|---|
| Price | $0 | $29/mo |
| Includes |
| Plan details |
Key features
- Ingestion pipeline that cleans and structures multi-format data
- Hybrid search combining vector search, BM25 and re-ranking
- Agent workflows that combine RAG, tools and MCP in a visual editor
- Datasets with citations and a retrieval testing view
- Chat assistants built on one or more datasets
- HTTP API for use in your own applications
Best for
- People
- Developers building document question answering, Teams that want to self-host their RAG stack, Builders of agent workflows that retrieve company documents
Limitations
- Self-hosting needs Docker and a fair amount of CPU, memory and disk
- Needs an LLM and embedding model; you add your own API key or run local models
- Hosted Free plan is small and has no API key
Screenshot

FAQ
- Is RAGFlow free?
- Yes. RAGFlow has a free plan: Open source (Apache 2.0): self-host free; cloud Free plan 500 credits/month. We last checked ragflow.io's pricing page on 2026-10-23.
- What does the RAGFlow free plan include?
- The RAGFlow free plan includes: 5 apps; 1 team member; 0.1 GB dataset storage. Source: https://ragflow.io/pricing (checked 2026-10-23).
- How do I get RAGFlow for free?
- Steps: Clone the repository and start it with Docker Compose; Open the web UI and log in; Add an LLM under Model providers and create a dataset. Start at https://ragflow.io/docs (checked 2026-10-22).
- Do I need an account to use RAGFlow for free?
- Not for the free option: the free route is to self-host RAGFlow (Clone the repository and start it with Docker Compose). Checked 2026-10-22.
- What's the catch with RAGFlow's free plan?
- You need an LLM and embedding model. Hosted Free plan has no API key and small limits. Checked 2026-10-22.
- How much does RAGFlow cost after the free plan?
- The cheapest paid plan is the Starter plan, at $29 a month, billed monthly. We checked ragflow.io's pricing page on 2026-10-23.Source: ragflow.io
- What are free alternatives to RAGFlow?
- Tavily, You.com and LiveKit all have free plans. We checked their free offers on 2026-10-25.
- Is there a free hosted plan?
- Yes. The Free plan on the pricing section has 500 credits a month, 5 apps and 1 team member, and API key is not available.Source: ragflow.io
- Can I run it in production?
- The GitHub README says Docker deployment is suitable for quick evaluation, integration testing and production deployment.Source: github.com/infiniflow/ragflow
- What do I need to self-host it?
- Docker, a recommended 4 CPU cores, 16 GB RAM and 50 GB free disk, plus access to an LLM and embedding model.Source: ragflow.io/docs
Free alternatives

Tavily
Search API built for AI agents.
Free forever, 1,000 API credits per month
You.com
Web search and research APIs for AI agents, with a free MCP tier.
Free forever, Up to 100 Web Search API queries a day through the MCP server

LiveKit
Realtime voice and video infrastructure for AI agents.
Free forever, Free Build plan

LangSmith
Observability, evals and deployment for LLM agents.
Free forever, Free Developer plan: 5k traces per month

Pinecone
Serverless vector database for AI applications.
Free forever, Free Starter plan
Sources
- Free offer
- Verified on github.com/infiniflow/ragflow
…is a leading open-source Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) engine that fuses cutting-edge RAG with Agent capabilities to create a superior context layer for…
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Checked against
Added by our team. We check that a free option exists and record the date; signing up is between you and RAGFlow, so read their privacy policy and terms first.
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