Is IFTTT free? Yes, there is a free plan that never expires, but it caps you at two Applets. That is enough to try the idea and not much more. If you mainly wanted IFTTT to ping you when a game patch drops, a store restocks, or a favorite creator posts, there are other ways to get those alerts, some of them free too. Here is what you get for nothing, and where the paid tiers start.
What the free IFTTT plan includes
IFTTT's plans page lists the free tier as $0 forever with:
- 2 Applets
- standard Applet speed
- unlimited runs of those two Applets
- the mobile app
"Standard speed" matters for alerts. IFTTT's RSS trigger checks for new items once an hour on the free plan. On Pro and Pro+ it checks every five minutes. So a free applet watching a patch notes feed could tell you up to an hour late.
What the paid IFTTT plans cost
| Plan | Price | Applets | Notable extras |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | $0 | 2 | Standard speed |
| Pro | $2.99/mo, billed yearly ($35.88) | 20 | Faster speed, multi-action Applets, webhooks |
| Pro+ | $8.99/mo, billed yearly ($107.88) | Unlimited | Filters and queries, AI services, multiple accounts |
Those are the yearly prices. Pro is cheap, and if you run a smart home it is probably worth it.
The catch for alert hunters
IFTTT is built to connect things. To get an alert from a website, you usually need that site to have an RSS feed, then you pick "New feed item" or "New feed item matches", which fires when a post contains a keyword or short phrase. Two problems show up fast:
- Lots of pages have no feed. A store's product page or a game's news page often doesn't.
- Keyword matching is blunt. Watch for "Switch" on a gaming news feed and you get every story that mentions the console, plus the ones about light switches.
Free and cheap ways to get alerts instead
AyeWatch. AyeWatch is a monitor, not an automation app. You write what you want in normal words, like "tell me when this store has the limited edition controller back in stock", and paste the page, or point it at a subreddit, YouTube channel or X account. It reads each new item for meaning and alerts you with a short summary. The Free Preview gives you three lifetime monitoring runs across up to three topics, no card needed. Those runs do not refill, so treat it as a trial. After that, Pro is $9 a month with hourly checks, and Pro+ is $19 with ASAP mode for drops that sell out fast. Push notifications on iPhone and Android come with every plan.
RSS.app. If the only problem is "this site has no feed", RSS.app can make one. Its free plan gives two feeds refreshed every 24 hours, which you could plug into one of your two IFTTT Applets.
Distill. The Distill browser extension can watch a single part of a page, like the "out of stock" label, and its free plan includes 25 monitors. Local checks only run while your browser is open, and free cloud checks run every six hours.
changedetection.io. Free if you are willing to run it on your own computer or server with Docker. More setup, no monthly bill.
Which one to pick
- You want alerts about games, drops, creators or news, and you want fewer junk pings: try AyeWatch first.
- You only need a feed for a site that doesn't have one: RSS.app's free plan.
- You want to connect your phone, lights or calendar: stay on IFTTT, it is good at that.
The short answer
IFTTT is free for two Applets, and Pro costs $2.99 a month if you pay for the year. For alerts specifically, a monitor that reads posts instead of counting keywords will bother you less. You can set up your first AyeWatch monitor in a minute and see if it catches what you care about.