Zero Paywall Policy

🛡️ Zero-Paywall Verification Criteria & Policy

DevShelf is strictly a 100% Free Forever Developer Directory & API Catalog. Our mission is to provide developers, students, independent builders, and AI agents with completely accessible, non-deceptive tooling without paywalls or trial traps.

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1. Allowed Resources & Eligibility

To qualify for listing on DevShelf, every submitted tool, library, API, or cloud service must meet at least one of the following criteria:

• 100% Free Forever Tier: An ongoing, non-expiring free tier with sufficient quota for independent developers and hobbyists.
• No Credit Card Required: Sign-up must never demand upfront payment details, bank credentials, or pre-authorization charges.
• Open-Source & Self-Hostable: Transparently licensed open-source software (MIT, Apache-2.0, GPL, BSD, MPL, etc.) that developers can compile and run locally without proprietary runtime gates.
• Free Community / Developer Editions: Fully functional local or desktop editions (e.g. SQLite, Bruno, Nushell, LocalAI).
• Public & Unauthenticated APIs: Endpoints accessible without authentication, or using free, self-serve developer API keys.

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2. Disallowed Resources & Exclusion Criteria

Submissions matching any of the following patterns will be rejected or promptly removed:

Pattern	Policy	Reason
Mandatory Credit Card on Signup	❌ Strictly Prohibited	Forces developers into accidental renewal traps.
Time-Limited Free Trials (e.g. 7, 14, 30 days)	❌ Strictly Prohibited	Temporary trial periods without a permanent free fallback do not meet the "Free Forever" mandate.
Closed Waitlists / Invitation-Only Previews	❌ Prohibited	All listed tools must have immediate public self-service signup.
Bait-and-Switch Pricing	❌ Strictly Prohibited	Declaring a tool "free" that requires purchasing credits or subscriptions for basic functionality.
Marketing Spyware / Forced Telemetry	❌ Prohibited	Utilities with intrusive adware, cryptocurrency miners, or undisclosed tracker payloads.

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3. Disclosure & Quota Requirements

Every catalog entry must specify accurate quota boundaries:

• Rate Limits: Disclose daily or monthly ceilings (e.g., 10,000 req/day, 50 requests/min).
• Storage & Compute: Explicitly note persistent storage or RAM limitations on free-tier sandboxes.
• Status Tags: Use standardized metadata tags (No Card Required, 100% Free Forever, Open-Source).

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4. Reporting Paywall Violations

If a listed resource sunsets its free tier, introduces an upfront credit card requirement, or institutes a trial bait gate:

1. Open an issue using the Report Content Template.
2. DevShelf's automated audit:trial-bait suite periodically crawls catalog URLs to detect changes in pricing terms, ensuring catalog freshness and developer trust.