CloudPouch Free and Pro plans
CloudPouch has a free plan and a paid one. Free is the basic plan: it is free and stays free, but it does not include every feature. Pro covers all paid plans and gives you the full range of features: the Opportunities table, the evidence behind each finding, full run history, and export. You can get Pro monthly or yearly for one person, or as a Team plan for three or more users, where every seat gets Pro. Prices are on the CloudPouch pricing page.
Free and the Pro trial are two different things:
- Free is a permanent plan with no expiry. Once you register, you can run full Savings Scans across every supported AWS service for as long as you want.
- Pro trial is Pro for 7 days. It needs no credit card, the 7 days count from registration, and registering requires an email address. At the end of the 7 days, CloudPouch switches to Free automatically.
There are exactly three plan states: Free, Pro, and Pro trial. Each seat on a Team plan runs as Pro, with the full feature set.
What CloudPouch Free includes
Section titled “What CloudPouch Free includes”On Free you can:
- Run a Savings Scan — the full bulk scan across all supported AWS services, not a reduced one.
- Open the Overview tab in the Savings Workspace and see what a scan is worth.
- View the savings flow (Sankey) diagram. The diagram is identical on both plans.
- Click to pin a stage of the savings flow and read aggregate statistics for it, with an Upgrade to Pro to see the affected resources call to action in place of resource names.
- See per-service savings totals.
- Browse your AWS costs in Billing and Compare, as on Pro. The per-service insight panels in Billing are a Pro surface; see Where plan limits show up.
- Keep a history of your scan runs as summary records.
What Free does not include:
- The Opportunities table. Free sees a paywall card and a call to action to run a scan in its place.
- Per-opportunity evidence — the metrics, configuration, reference data, and recommended action behind each finding.
- Full run history. Free history holds summary records only.
- Run export.
Free and Pro side by side
Section titled “Free and Pro side by side”| Surface | Free | Pro (including Pro trial) |
|---|---|---|
| Savings Scan across all services | Runs; stored as a summary record | Runs; stored as a full run with per-opportunity detail |
| Savings Overview tab | Visible, with an upgrade banner | Visible, complete |
| Savings flow (Sankey) diagram | Visible | Visible, identical to Free |
| Savings flow click-to-pin drill-down | Aggregate statistics only, no resource names | Lists up to the three largest findings, with a button to the filtered list in Opportunities |
| Opportunities tab | Paywall card instead of the table | Full filterable, sortable table |
| Opportunity evidence and recommended action | Not available | Available for every finding |
| Savings History tab | Summary records only | Full history |
| Run export | Not available | Available |
| ”Savings Scan finished” dialog | Identical on both plans | Identical on both plans |
The dialog that appears when a Savings Scan finishes is the one surface with no plan branch at all: it shows per-service totals with recommendation-type breakdown lines, and never individual resources, for anyone. The plan difference appears one click later — Open in Savings opens the full run on Pro and the summary record on Free.
The embedded CloudPouch MCP server follows the same boundary. An activated Free plan exposes summary data and the action tools that trigger CloudPouch’s own data collection; the per-run history and per-opportunity detail tools are Pro. The per-tool split is on MCP tools.
How registration works
Section titled “How registration works”An unlicensed CloudPouch opens on the Login screen. Getting past it means registering — for the Free plan or for a Pro trial. Both entry points live on that screen: Start with a free account, and the Pro-trial form. Both open the same dialog.
Registration is a two-step email flow:
- Enter your email address and accept the terms (the EULA).
- Enter the 6-digit one-time code that CloudPouch emails you.
After you enter the code, your license key appears in CloudPouch automatically. The email you receive also contains a copy of the key, for example for use on a new computer. If you buy Pro directly instead, the key arrives by email only.
The dialog lets you resend the code after a short countdown, and change the address if you mistyped it. No AWS credentials are involved in registration. In normal analysis, CloudPouch does not send AWS cost or resource data to CloudPouch servers; Privacy and data handling lists the few flows that do reach CloudPouch.
After registering on Free, you can run a Savings Scan immediately. Continue with Connect an AWS profile.
Where plan limits show up
Section titled “Where plan limits show up”Free users meet the same paywall card wherever they reach a Pro-only surface:
- The Billing insight panels.
- Savings → Opportunities.
In addition, the Free Overview tab carries an upgrade banner, and the savings-flow drill-down shows aggregate statistics with an upgrade call to action instead of resource names.
Plan limits are not enforced by hiding buttons. CloudPouch checks capability at a shared boundary in its main process that covers local storage, the interface, and the embedded MCP server together — so an AI assistant talking to CloudPouch over MCP cannot read detail that the Free interface withholds. The CloudPouch licensing service is the sole source of truth for which plan a machine is on; CloudPouch does not decide that locally.
During a Pro trial
Section titled “During a Pro trial”The Pro trial gives you Pro for 7 days, counted from registration, with no credit card. A chip in the CloudPouch header shows how many trial days remain. It is amber normally and turns red with a warning icon once 3 days or fewer are left. Its labels are Trial · N days left, Trial · 1 day left, and Trial · less than a day left. Clicking the chip opens the CloudPouch pricing page.
A dialog introducing the trial appears once, ever. A reminder dialog appears once per session at the same 3-day-or-fewer threshold. Neither the chip nor the dialogs appear on Free, or on a full Pro subscription outside a trial window.
When your plan changes
Section titled “When your plan changes”When the CloudPouch licensing service has moved a machine to Free — typically because a Pro trial finished — the next application start shows a one-time notice. You do not have to navigate anywhere to trigger it.
The notice explains that Savings Scans and the MCP server keep working with summary savings only, and that per-resource detail is locked. Its title is Your Pro trial has ended when the previous plan was a trial, and Your plan changed to Free otherwise. Its buttons are Continue on Free and Upgrade to Pro.
Two consequences are worth knowing before you upgrade or let a trial lapse:
- Runs saved while CloudPouch is on Free stay summary-only after you upgrade to Pro. Upgrading does not add per-opportunity detail to runs that were already saved. Run one fresh Savings Scan on Pro to get full detail for that profile going forward.
- CloudPouch validates its license once per application start. A plan change therefore takes effect the next time you start CloudPouch, not during a session that is already running.
Both are covered on Limitations.
Your license key
Section titled “Your license key”If you bought CloudPouch 1.x, your license keeps working unchanged as Pro.
If you already have a license key, CloudPouch shows it masked in Settings, with Show and Copy controls, so you can check or copy it without leaving it exposed on screen.
Every license validation request carries your license key, a machine identifier, and the running CloudPouch version. No AWS data is part of it. See Privacy and data handling.
Pricing
Section titled “Pricing”CloudPouch pricing is fixed per license (per user on the Team plan) rather than scaling with your AWS bill, and one license works with unlimited AWS accounts. Current prices are on the CloudPouch pricing page.