Start Page HQ Now Has a Free Plan
July 31, 2026

Start Page HQ Now Has a Free Plan

Until today, Start Page HQ had one way in: paying for it. There was a demo you could click through without an account, and there were three paid plans - monthly, annual, and a one-time lifetime purchase - and nothing in between. If you were not ready to pay, there was nowhere to put your links.

That changes now. Start Page HQ has a free plan. You sign up, you pick it, and you land on a real dashboard - your own page, your own widgets, synced to every browser and device you use. No credit card, no trial countdown, no card on file that quietly charges you in fourteen days.

#What You Get on Free

The free plan is one page with up to 8 widgets on it, and it is a real product rather than a preview:

  • 55 of our 63 widget types - notes, todos, habit trackers, weather, world clocks, calendars, news, RSS and YouTube feeds, podcasts, currency and unit converters, timers, and the whole set of developer utilities.
  • Cloud sync across every device. Your dashboard follows you from laptop to phone to a different browser entirely. This is the same sync paying customers get.
  • Every browser extension plus the web app. Chrome, Firefox, Safari, Edge, and startpagehq.com, all on one account.
  • All themes and wallpapers. Every accent color, every color theme, light and dark, and the full curated wallpaper library.
  • Preset feed sources. Pick from curated lists of news sites, YouTube channels, subreddits, Substacks, GitHub release feeds, and podcasts.
  • 50 AI credits, granted once when you sign up. Roughly 5 images or 50 translations, enough to actually try the AI widgets rather than just read about them.
  • Save links from anywhere. The browser share sheet and the Collection widget both work on free, so you can send a link to your dashboard from any app.

There are a few item caps: 8 notes per Notes widget, 24 links per Links widget, 15 items per Collection, and 2 TradingView widgets. They are generous on purpose. A Links widget with 24 bookmarks in it is bigger than most people's bookmark bar.

#What Stays Premium

On free you do not get:

  • More than one page
  • The 8 premium widget types: Photo Frame, Uptime Monitor, Google Calendar, Stripe Sales, Tasks, and the three t0ggles widgets
  • File uploads - custom wallpapers, custom icons, note attachments, and the asset library
  • Connected accounts: Google Calendar, Stripe, Google Drive, iCloud, t0ggles
  • Public sharing of a page or a widget
  • Your own feed URLs and podcast search, on top of the presets
  • Saving images to a Collection, though saving links works fine

Premium is $3.99 a month, $25 a year, or $49 once for lifetime access. Any of them unlocks everything above, gives you unlimited pages and widgets, and refills your AI credits on a schedule. One-time AI credit packs stay purchasable on the free plan too, if credits are the only thing you want more of.

#Starting Out

New accounts now open on a plan chooser with the free card first. Pick free and onboarding asks you to choose a starting point - developer, designer, productivity, student, minimal, or staying informed - and builds you a hand-arranged page around it. You get a working dashboard in about a minute, not an empty grid and a widget picker.

If you already made an account and hit the paywall, that account works now. Sign in and it will be waiting where you left it. Nothing was deleted.

#If You Ever Cancel

Worth saying plainly, because most tools are vague about it: canceling does not delete your account. It goes read-only for 14 days, so you have time to change your mind or export anything you want. After that it trims back to the free plan - extra pages, premium widgets, uploads, and custom feeds go, and your account, your first page, and any AI credits you still have stay. You keep everything you wrote. You just cannot add the next thing past the free caps.

The same applies to the caps in general. They are growth rules, not size rules: if you are over a limit, nothing freezes or disappears, you can still read, edit, reorder, and delete. Only the next addition is refused.

#Get Started

Create a free account and pick the Free plan, or try the demo first if you would rather not sign up yet. If you are new here, what a start page is and syncing your new tab across browsers are good places to read next.