Free means two things in the Slack Marketplace, and the difference decides whether the workflow you build this month still works in three. Some apps run a permanent free plan; some run a free trial that expires on a date. Both get filed under free by roundups that never opened the pricing page. Every limit below is quoted from the vendor’s own pricing page or help centre.
We build Matter, a recognition app native to Slack and Microsoft Teams, so read our take on our own product with that in mind. The test here is narrow: not which Slack app is best, but which ones have a genuine free tier, what it includes, where it stops, and what the first paid step costs. Apps whose free tier we could not verify are named as unverified, not listed.
Last verified September 2026.
The short version
Nine of the ten apps below run a permanent free plan, and GIPHY has no paid tier at all. The strongest free tiers for a whole workspace are Matter, which is not seat capped and gives unlimited users kudos recognition, ClickUp, which prints unlimited tasks and members, and Polly, whose free plan carries unlimited poll responses and participants. The weakest are metered per workspace rather than per person: Zapier stops at 100 tasks a month, Simple Poll at 100 responses, TimeBot at 20 time-off requests, and Zoom ends almost every free meeting at 40 minutes. Count before you install: people for the seat-capped tools, events for the metered ones.
Free plan vs free trial: the difference that matters
A free plan is a tier the vendor sells at no cost with no end date. A free trial is a paid tier lent to you for a fixed window. Every app in the numbered list has the first kind, and several offer the second on top. Matter opens paid plans with a 14-day free trial and no credit card, and a team that does not upgrade drops back to the Free plan automatically rather than losing access. Simple Poll bundles a Premium trial into signup, and Geekbot advertises a free trial of 30 days. In each case the free plan underneath survives.
ClickUp blurs the line inside one plan: the plan is permanent, but several headline features on it, including Gantt charts and dashboards, are exposed as trials rather than included. The plan does not expire; those features do.
Free Slack apps compared
| App | What it does in Slack | Free tier | Hard limits | Best free for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Matter | Kudos in the channel, weekly prompt | Free plan, unlimited users | No rewards or celebrations | A recognition habit at any headcount |
| Trello | Turns a Slack message into a card | Free plan | 10 boards, 10 collaborators per Workspace | Small teams, a few boards |
| ClickUp | The /clickup new command makes a task | Free plan | 60MB storage, dashboards and Gantt are trials | Unlimited free seats and tasks |
| Todoist | The /todoist command makes a task | Free plan, named Beginner | 5 projects, 5 collaborators each, 1 week history | Personal to-dos captured from Slack |
| Zapier | Moves data between Slack and other apps | Free plan | 100 tasks a month, two-step Zaps, one user | Low-volume alerts, one person |
| Zoom | The /zoom command starts a meeting | Free plan, named Basic | 40 minutes a meeting, no cloud recording | Short ad hoc huddles |
| Polly | The /polly command runs in-channel polls | Free plan | 45 days of results history | Recurring polls, no response cap |
| Simple Poll | The /poll command puts a vote in a channel | Free plan | 100 responses a month, 5 options a poll | Occasional quick votes |
| TimeBot | Time off requests and approvals in Slack | Free plan | 20 time-off requests a month, workspace wide | Very small teams booking holiday |
| GIPHY | The /giphy command posts a GIF | Free, no paid tier at all | None printed on the listing | Culture, no admin overhead |
Free-tier limits and paid prices were verified in September 2026 against each vendor’s own pricing page or help centre, and G2 ratings are as of September 2026.
The best free Slack apps in 2026
1. Matter
We build Matter, so weigh this accordingly. Matter is peer recognition inside Slack: kudos in the channel where the work happened, a kudos template library, and Feedback Friday™ (US Patent 12,199,935) prompting the team weekly, with no separate login because Matter’s Slack app syncs users from Slack. It leads on the shape of its free tier: the Free plan is not seat capped, so unlimited users can give and receive kudos. In The Recognition Habit, Matter’s 2026 Benchmark Report, teams that build recognition around a weekly ritual give about 2.5x more recognition per member than ad hoc teams, and a ritual needs everyone in it. Methodology is on our research page.
Free tier includes: the Free plan for unlimited users: kudos recognition, the kudos template library and Feedback Friday.
Where free stops: celebrations and custom kudos tied to company values need Basic, and rewards, swag and challenges need Pro. Free Matter is recognition, not rewards: if a gift-card catalogue is why you are shopping, the free plan will not do.
Paid starts at: Basic $1 per user/month, billed annually; Pro $3 per user/month, billed annually, adding 10,000+ eGift card options across 200+ countries and company swag; Surveys are a $2 per user/month add-on. Verified September 2026 on Matter’s pricing page; reviews on G2.
Best free for: small businesses that want a recognition habit running this week.
2. Trello
Trello turns a Slack conversation into a card: save a message for later, react with the inbox tray emoji, or pick Create card from message. It is capture, not board management.
Free tier includes: unlimited cards, unlimited Power-Ups per board, unlimited storage with a 10MB per file ceiling, up to 10 boards and 250 Workspace command runs a month, free for up to 10 collaborators per Workspace.
Where free stops: at 10 boards and 10 collaborators, both per Workspace, so splitting into several Workspaces is the standard workaround; AI extraction of due dates needs Trello Standard. On G2, where Trello holds a 4.4 across 14,063 reviews, Vaibhav G. (September 2026) notes it “can become a bit difficult to manage when a project has a large number of boards, cards, and tasks”.
Paid starts at: Standard, $5USD Per user/month if billed annually ($6 billed monthly), lifting the board limit and attachments to 250MB. Verified September 2026 on Trello’s pricing page.
Best free for: teams of ten or fewer capturing messages before they scroll away.
3. ClickUp
ClickUp has the most unusual free plan here: unlimited tasks and unlimited members, with no seat cap. The /clickup new command creates a task from Slack, and task links unfurl with status, assignee and priority.
Free tier includes: unlimited tasks, unlimited members, 60MB of storage, 5 active rules and 100 automation executions, 3 whiteboards and 1 form.
Where free stops: 60MB of storage for the whole account, which a team attaching files from Slack exhausts within days. Dashboards, Gantt charts and timeline views are trials rather than inclusions, so reporting disappears when they lapse, and guests get full access with no permission controls. ClickUp holds a 4.6 on G2 across 14,166 reviews.
Paid starts at: Unlimited, $7 Per user/month, billed yearly, or $10 Per user/month, billed monthly, raising storage to unlimited. Verified September 2026 on ClickUp’s pricing page.
Best free for: whole-workspace task tracking where the files live elsewhere.
4. Todoist
Todoist is the lightweight end of the same job: /todoist creates a task in the channel, and the three-dot menu converts any message into one. Its free plan, branded Beginner, is aimed at one person.
Free tier includes: 5 personal projects, 5 collaborators per project, 3 filter views, 1 week of activity history and 5 MB file uploads.
Where free stops: five active projects is the wall for anyone running more than a handful of workstreams, and a week of history means you cannot audit last month. Reminders are the omission people feel most: a task captured from Slack will not chase anyone. Moayad A. (August 2026) files reminders, custom filters and activity logs under “Locked Behind the Paywall” on G2, where Todoist holds a 4.5 across 830 reviews.
Paid starts at: Pro, $7/month, or $60/year ($5/month billed yearly), raising the ceiling to 300 projects and full reporting history. Verified September 2026 on Todoist’s pricing page.
Best free for: individuals, not teams sharing one list.
5. Zapier
Zapier is how most free workspaces get alerts from tools with no Slack app of their own. It is a connector: the automation is built in Zapier’s builder and only the result reaches Slack.
Free tier includes: 100 tasks per month, two-step Zap workflows with one trigger and one action, a single user per account, unlimited assets and a 15-minute polling interval.
Where free stops: at 100 tasks a month, where one task is one action step running once, so a single alert Zap firing a few times a day burns the allowance. Two-step workflows mean no filters and no second action, and 15-minute polling means the alert is not real time. Zapier holds a 4.5 on G2 across 2,087 reviews.
Paid starts at: Professional, starting from $19.99/month, adding multi-step Zaps and 2-minute polling. Verified September 2026 on Zapier’s pricing page.
Best free for: one person wiring up a couple of low-volume alerts.
6. Zoom
Typing /zoom in a channel spins up an instant meeting and posts the join link, and meetings can be scheduled, started and managed from Slack. Even where the paid platform is something else, it is the fastest way to turn a thread into a call.
Free tier includes: Zoom Workplace Basic hosts an unlimited number of meetings for up to 100 participants, with local recording, plus Zoom Chat, Clips Basic, Mail and Calendar and Docs Basic.
Where free stops: at 40 minutes. Zoom’s support page states that almost all meetings hosted by Basic users, on free and paid accounts alike, are limited to 40 minutes, including one-on-ones; the only carve-out is a host sitting alone. Cloud recording and AI Companion are not on Basic, and the cap follows the licence, not the account. Zoom holds a 4.5 on G2 across 56,605 reviews.
Paid starts at: Zoom Workplace Pro, $15.99 billed monthly per user, raising meetings to 30 hours and adding 10 GB of cloud recording per licence; the annual rate did not render on the page. Verified September 2026 on Zoom’s free video conferencing page.
Best free for: short ad hoc huddles started from a channel.
7. Polly
Polly has the most generous free plan here, on the axis that usually costs money. Type /polly in any channel and people answer in one click. Its listing describes it as ready for Slack Enterprise Grid, which few free apps state.
Free tier includes: unlimited responses, unlimited participants and 45 days of results history, at no cost.
Where free stops: history. Forty-five days is fine for a one-off poll and useless for a quarterly trend, which is the upgrade Polly is selling. Paid plans are per author licence, so one person can poll hundreds. Alex P. (April 2026) writes on G2, where Polly holds a 4.6 across 94 reviews, that “The pricing practices are genuinely misleading, and that’s not a word I use lightly”.
Paid starts at: Basic $19/mo, billed $228 annually for 1 license, and Team $249/mo for 5 users, billed annually. Verified September 2026 on Polly’s Slack pricing page.
Best free for: recurring polls where volume matters more than history.
8. Simple Poll
Simple Poll does one thing with almost no learning curve: /poll drops a vote into the channel next to the conversation that raised it, with an anonymous option. It is Slack only, and its free plan is metered on the axis Polly leaves open.
Free tier includes: 100 responses per month and unlimited polls of up to 5 options each, described by the vendor as for small teams and trying it out.
Where free stops: those 100 responses are the whole workspace, not per person, so one poll answered by 30 people spends a third of the month’s allowance. Simple Poll holds a 4.2 on G2 across 112 reviews, where Eric R. (July 2025) found it “a little clunky”.
Paid starts at: Premium at $49 a month, priced per workspace rather than per user and billed annually at $588 a year, for workspaces of 1 to 24 members. Verified September 2026 on Simple Poll’s pricing page.
Best free for: small workspaces running the occasional quick vote.
9. TimeBot
TimeBot is holiday booking for teams too small for an HR system. People request time off in Slack, managers approve it there, Slack status updates for out-of-office, and it syncs with Google or Outlook calendars.
Free tier includes: the pricing page states that the free plan gives 20 time off requests per month for free. That is the only limit it prints.
Where free stops: at those 20 requests, counted across the whole workspace and reset monthly, so a team of fifteen booking summer holiday exhausts it in a month. Attendance and time tracking are Premium, and seat limits and retention on free are not published. TimeBot carries a 3.9 on G2 across just 14 reviews, the thinnest signal here.
Paid starts at: Starter, $1.00 per active user per month, with a 14-day complimentary trial. Verified September 2026 on TimeBot’s pricing page.
Best free for: teams under about ten people who book time off rarely.
10. GIPHY
GIPHY is the only app here with nothing to upsell you: type /giphy and a search term and a GIF posts in the channel. No account, no seat count, no paid tier.
Free tier includes: no usage limit, seat limit or feature gate is printed on its Slack Marketplace listing, which carries no pricing.
Where free stops: it does not, and the risk is a different one. The integration is built and maintained by Slack rather than by GIPHY, and GIPHY has belonged to Shutterstock since 2023, so its future depends on Slack shipping it. It has no G2 listing either, so there is no independent review signal.
Paid starts at: nothing. GIPHY publishes no consumer or team pricing; the only fee it prints is for developer API keys. Verified September 2026 on the GIPHY Slack Marketplace listing.
Best free for: any workspace wanting a culture app with no administration.
Free apps that nearly made the list, and three we left off
Three more have real free plans, too narrow for a numbered slot. Geekbot runs async standups, polls and surveys through a bot, free for teams of up to 10 users on its Starter plan. Donut automates intros, watercooler prompts and celebrations, free for intros pairing up to 24 people, one watercooler channel and Shoutouts at 5 points per person each week; paid starts from $74 USD/month billed annually. HubSpot free tools are a real CRM with a two-way Slack app, but the pricing page describes the tier as free for up to 2 users with HubSpot branding on customer-facing assets: a two-person free plan, not a team one.
Three were dropped outright, and the reasons matter because other roundups list them as free Slack apps. Jotform pushes form submissions into Slack, but nothing is built or answered there: a notification connector, not a Slack app. Workast is genuinely Slack native, but its pricing page renders feature rows without a single dollar amount and names no plan as free, so we could not verify a free tier and will not assert one. UptimeBot does publish a free plan, but it gives 2 monitors per Slack workspace and has no G2 listing.
What breaks first as your workspace grows
Free plans do not fail gradually. They fail at one number, and the kind of number differs by app. Knowing which kind you are buying is most of the decision.
- People. Trello stops at 10 collaborators per Workspace, Todoist at 5 per project, Geekbot at 10 users, HubSpot at 2. Matter and ClickUp have no seat cap.
- Events. Zapier’s 100 tasks, Simple Poll’s 100 responses and TimeBot’s 20 requests are per month, per workspace.
- Memory. Polly keeps 45 days of results, Todoist one week, ClickUp 60MB of storage. Nothing stops working; you just cannot look back.
- The feature you came for. Rewards need Matter Pro, dashboards are trial shaped on ClickUp free, cloud recording needs Zoom Pro.
Pick the app whose wall you will hit last, and accept that a workspace past roughly 25 people pays for something. Notice how cheap the first step usually is: TimeBot Starter is $1.00 per active user per month and Matter Basic is $1 per user/month, billed annually, while Zapier and Polly ask far more.
One consideration belongs to whoever approves installs: Slack owners and admins decide whether members can add apps themselves, and on Enterprise Grid an org-level admin approves an app once for every workspace, so a free app is never free of cost to your IT admins. When you are ready to look past the free tier, our roundup of the best Slack apps covers the paid field too, and our comparison of Slack apps for employee recognition goes deep on the category where free plans differ most.
Frequently asked questions about free Slack apps
What are the best free Slack apps in 2026?
The best free Slack apps in 2026 are the ones whose free tier is not a trial in disguise: Matter for recognition, Trello and ClickUp for boards and tasks, Todoist for personal capture, Zapier for connecting other tools, Zoom for calls, Polly and Simple Poll for votes, TimeBot for time off, GIPHY for culture. Matter, ClickUp and Polly are the most generous, because none caps the number of users.
What is the difference between a free Slack app and a free trial?
A free plan is a permanent tier sold at no cost; a free trial is a paid tier lent to you for a fixed window. Every app here has a real free plan, and several offer trials on top: Matter opens paid plans with a 14-day free trial and no credit card, and Geekbot advertises a free trial of 30 days. The free plan underneath survives when the trial ends.
Do free Slack apps stay free?
All ten print a permanent free tier on the vendor’s own pricing page, so the plan itself does not expire. What changes is your usage: metered plans reset monthly and are exhausted by growth, seat-capped plans break the day you hire someone, and ClickUp exposes several of its free features as trials.
How many people can use a free Slack app?
It depends on the app, and this is where free plans differ most. Matter’s Free plan is not seat capped and covers unlimited users for kudos, and ClickUp prints unlimited members. Trello allows 10 collaborators per Workspace, Todoist 5 per project, Geekbot 10 users, and HubSpot’s free tools are free for up to 2 users. Zapier is strictest, at one user per account.
Which free Slack app should a small team install first?
Install the one that fixes a problem you have this week, not the one with the longest feature list. For a team that wants people to feel seen, Matter’s Free plan runs recognition for unlimited users. For work lost in threads, Trello or ClickUp captures messages as tasks. For a quick decision, Polly has no response cap.
Do free Slack apps work with Slack Enterprise Grid?
Some state that they do and most say nothing, which is the answer to assume. Matter supports Slack Enterprise Grid with multiple connected channels managed from one workspace, and Slack Connect. Polly’s listing says it is ready for Enterprise Grid, and Simple Poll sells Grid coverage on its Enterprise plan. The rest make no statement either way.
The bottom line
Free Slack apps are worth taking seriously, and worth reading carefully. All ten give a workspace something real without a credit card, and every one stops somewhere specific: a headcount, a monthly allowance, a retention window, or the feature that made you look. Work out which applies before you install, and the free plan will do its job for months rather than surprising you in week three. If recognition is what you want running today, that is what we built Matter to do.
