This went live this morning, so if you're reading this today you're genuinely early. What actually happened Replit shipped Free Mode today, announced jointly with OpenAI. It runs on GPT-5.6 Luna — the cheapest model in OpenAI's 5.6 family — and it's now the default mode when you open Agent. The reason it exists: OpenAI cut Luna's price by around 80% on July 30. That's the whole story. Replit didn't get generous, the floor dropped. Reality check on the name, because people are already confused: - It is not a free plan. Starter gets Free Mode inside the limits Starter already had. - Core ($20/mo) and Pro ($100/mo) get a Free Mode allowance that refreshes every ~5 hours, with a weekly cap on top. Pro's weekly cap is bigger. - "Free" means doesn't burn your credits. Not costs nothing. - Also, the modes got renamed and this trips people up: Old name New name What it is Lite Free No-cost everyday agent work, always on Auto Economy Power Paid mid-tier, same price as Economy was Power Max Paid top-tier, frontier models Your old settings carried over under the new names. Why this one matters more than a normal pricing update I've been saying the same thing for months: you don't need a frontier model to rename a button. Cheap model for cheap tasks, expensive model for the hard 10%. Replit just took that idea and made it the default setting for everyone. The frontier model is now the exception you opt into, not the thing running by accident while you ask it what a useState hook is. That's the shift. Not "free." The default flipped. The actual tips 1. Set the mode before you type, not after. Mode selector sits under the prompt box. ⌘+Shift+I (Ctrl+Shift+I on Windows) cycles Free → Power → Max without leaving the input. Most wasted credits happen because someone starts typing in whatever mode was left open. 2. One step per prompt. Always. Free Mode falls over when you dump "build me a full CRM with auth and Stripe" into it. It's strong when you give it one screen, one feature, one interaction at a time. Build the thing that proves the idea works, then add to it.