The free plan, and how credits actually work

The free plan on Instoly is a plan, not a trial. It does not expire after two weeks, we do not ask for a card, and the thing it is built to do is the thing everyone wants to try: someone comments, they get your link in their DMs.

What follows is what you get for ₹0, what a credit is actually spent on, and the point where paying starts to make sense. We would rather you knew all of that before signing up than after.

What do you get for ₹0?

• 1,000 DM and comment credits a month.
• One Instagram account connected.
• Unlimited Auto DM flows and unlimited keywords, so the number of posts you automate is not the limit.
• Comment triggers, which is the whole comment-to-DM loop.
• Instagram analytics and Auto DM reports.
• 20 invoice credits a month, with GST invoices as a PDF and a shareable link.
• 50 AI writing credits and 2 AI image credits a month.

AI Studio, which covers virtual try-on, scripts and captions, is open on the free plan for a limited time rather than permanently, so treat that part as something to try now rather than something to count on forever.

What does one credit buy?

One credit, one thing done. We did not build a bundle to decode, and the price does not change with volume.

• One auto DM costs one DM credit.
• One public comment reply costs one DM credit as well, so a flow doing both spends two.
• One invoice costs one invoice credit.
• One caption, script or flow written by AI costs one AI writing credit, and refining it costs the same as writing it.
• One virtual try-on image costs one AI image credit, and only when it succeeds. A failed generation puts the credit straight back.

What do the invoice and AI credits cover?

They are separate allowances, so spending DM credits never eats into them. The invoice credits build GST invoices from the posts you delivered, each one as a PDF and a shareable link, which is the part of brand work most creators are doing in a spreadsheet. Twenty a month covers a busy month of brand deals for most people.

The AI writing credits cover captions, scripts and the DM copy itself, and refining something costs the same as writing it, so we would draft twice rather than agonise once. The two AI image credits are virtual try-on, which puts a product on a person without a shoot.

What happens when the allowance runs out?

Your monthly allowance refills each month and does not roll over. If you run out, you can top up with credit packs, and we let those work on the free plan exactly as they do on a paid one, so you do not need a subscription to buy your way through one busy month.

Bought credits never expire, and the monthly allowance is always spent first. That ordering is deliberate on our part: a pack you buy now should still be there in a quiet month, rather than being eaten by an allowance that was going to refresh anyway.

When is a paid plan worth it?

Three things push people up, and in our experience none of them is panic about the DM count.

1. A second Instagram account. Pro covers two and Business five, and their credits are pooled rather than split, so a quiet account is not sitting on an allowance it will never use.
2. Story triggers. A story reply or a story mention starting a flow is a paid feature, and for anyone who posts stories daily it is often the reason to move.
3. Volume. Pro is ₹149 a month in India, or $9 outside it, for 40,000 DM and comment credits. Business is ₹399 or $29 for 350,000, which is the difference between a good week and a campaign.

Paying yearly saves 44 per cent against the monthly price, and we would rather say so here than let you find out afterwards.

What is deliberately not in the free plan?

Story reply and story mention triggers, more than one Instagram account, and the AI writing in twelve languages that comes with Pro. Everything that makes the comment-to-DM loop work is in the free plan, because we think a tool you cannot test properly is not worth anyone's time.

A free plan that cannot do the main thing is a demo with extra steps.

If you have not set the first one up yet, we walked through it in how to auto-reply to comments with a link, and the keyword choice that decides how many of those credits get spent well is in picking a keyword that behaves.

That is the whole of it, and it is what we tell people who ask us directly. Instoly is free to start, and what you pay for later is volume rather than the feature you came for.