Free Preview. Free for real.
Shield is free during the Free Preview: 10,000 recorded events per site per day, every feature, no credit card, no trial clock, and no paid tier waiting behind it. This page says exactly what free means here, why we can do it, what is shared in return, and what we promise if anything ever changes.
No credit card · No trial clock · Free Preview terms · What is shared
- 10,000recorded events per site, every day
- $0no card, no paid plan today
- 90 daysnotice before anything free changes
- 0form values, passwords or device fingerprints collected
What "preview" means, and what it does not
Shield has been public since August 2026. We call it a preview because it is young, not because it is temporary.
Preview means
- Features, defaults and limits still change, and we announce changes in the dashboard.
- No SLA or uptime commitment. Support is best effort, by email.
- Risk scores are signals with reasons. They can be wrong or unavailable, and when intelligence is unavailable Shield says unknown, never safe.
- You decide what happens on your forms. Shield changes nothing on your site until you switch a response on.
Preview does not mean
- A trial that expires. Nothing on your account counts down.
- A limited edition of a paid product. Every feature is in the free preview, including form protection, alerts, the Cloudflare integration and the server verify endpoint.
- A plan you will be moved off. There is no paid plan today, and the free preview is not a waiting room for one.
- A product that can vanish overnight. See the promises below.
What we promise
These are written into the Free Preview terms, not only on this page.
90 days' notice
Before we end the Free Preview, lower the default quota, or charge for anything that is free today, you get at least 90 days' notice by email and in the dashboard. Existing sites keep working on the current terms through that period.
Nothing we should not see
Shield never collects form values, passwords, payment details or plain-text emails, and it does not fingerprint devices. It scores the network a visit comes from. Exactly what is sent is documented field by field.
Your data stays yours
Delete a site at any time and its events, sessions and aggregates are removed by the retention process. Stopping Shield ends any contribution immediately; what was already contributed ages out within 90 days.
Why it is free
Three honest reasons, none of them "you are the product".
- The intelligence already exists. FindIP runs a free, unlimited IP intelligence API: geolocation, proxy, VPN, Tor, hosting and malicious-IP detection. Shield applies that intelligence to the visits, signups, logins and checkouts on your site, so each Shield site costs us little to serve.
- Free sites make the intelligence better. Every free Shield site contributes pseudonymized, network-level sightings to the FindIP Threat Network: an IP address, its network flags and a coarse event class, with your site as an irreversible pseudonym. Never form values, never who a visitor is, never cross-site profiles of people. That corpus improves the risk intelligence for everyone, including you.
- We want users, not invoices. Shield is early. The fastest way to make it good is to have it running on many real sites and to hear what owners need. There is no paid plan today; if one ever comes, it will cover volumes and features beyond what is free now, with the notice above.
How this compares with the usual free tier
Most tools in this category give you about a thousand free lookups a month to evaluate with. The Free Preview is meant to run your site, not to evaluate.
| Product | Free allowance | Per month, roughly |
|---|---|---|
| FindIP Shield Free Preview | 10,000 recorded events per site per dayevery feature, no card | about 300,000 per site |
| Fingerprint | 1,000 API calls per month14-day trial of paid features | 1,000 |
| IPQualityScore | 1,000 lookups per month | 1,000 |
| Castle | $5 of usage per monthabout 1,000 risk calls | about 1,000 |
| Google reCAPTCHA | 10,000 assessments per monthper organisation | 10,000 |
Competitor figures from the vendors' public pricing pages (Fingerprint, IPQualityScore, Castle, reCAPTCHA) as read on 25 October 2026. The products measure different things (a call, a lookup, an assessment, a recorded event) and plans change; check the vendor's page before deciding. If something here is out of date, write to [email protected] and we will correct it. A longer comparison: Shield vs Fingerprint vs IPQualityScore.
The limits, exactly
Free does not mean unbounded. These are the edges.
Quota and rate limits
- Each site records up to 10,000 events a day. Beyond that, ingest answers
429and the extra events are not recorded. Nothing is dropped silently; the dashboard shows the quota status. - Per-minute rate limits protect the service from bursts. Cloudflare edge requests are counted separately from browser events.
- A page view is one event. If a busy site nears the cap, keep automatic page tracking on only for the pages that matter and let the forms do the talking.
- Need more for a real site? Write to [email protected]. During the preview we raise quotas at no charge.
Fair use
- Install Shield only on sites you own or are authorised to instrument.
- You remain responsible for your visitors' notices and consents. Shield's strict mode and consent API are there to help.
- Sites that send fabricated or deliberately misleading traffic, or try to bypass the SDK's privacy controls, may be disabled.
- Shield is friction against bots and casual abuse, not a security boundary. For decisions that matter, verify on your server.
Questions people ask before installing
Is FindIP Shield really free?
Yes. Every Shield site gets 10,000 recorded events per day and every feature: events and sessions with reasons, form protection, alerts, the Cloudflare integration and the server verify endpoint. There is no credit card, no trial clock and no paid tier that the free one is a teaser for.
Will it stay free?
The Free Preview stays free. If we ever end the preview, lower the default quota, or start charging for something that is free today, we give at least 90 days' notice by email and in the dashboard, and existing sites keep working on the current terms through that period. That commitment is written into the Free Preview terms.
Is there a paid plan?
Not today. Shield is in Free Preview because we want users and feedback first. If a paid plan ever comes, it will cover volumes and features beyond what is free now, with the notice above; it will not take away what free sites have today.
Do you sell my visitors' data?
No. Shield never sees form values, passwords, payment details or plain-text emails, and it does not fingerprint devices. Free sites contribute pseudonymized, network-level sightings (an IP address, its network flags and a coarse event class, with your site as an irreversible pseudonym) to the FindIP Threat Network, which improves the risk intelligence for everyone including you. The exact field list is public, and nothing in it is sold.
What happens when a site reaches 10,000 events in a day?
Further events that day are refused with HTTP 429 and are not recorded; nothing is dropped silently, and the dashboard shows the quota status. Cloudflare edge requests are counted separately from browser events. If a real site needs more, write to [email protected] and we raise the quota at no charge during the preview.
Why can you afford to give this away?
FindIP already runs a free, unlimited IP intelligence API, and Shield applies that intelligence to activity on your site, so each Shield site costs us little to serve. Every free site also strengthens the Threat Network that both products draw on. We are early and we would rather have users than invoices.
Who is behind FindIP?
A small independent team that also builds ValidEmail, an email verification service. Support and security reports go to [email protected]. Read more on the About page.
Free, and meant to stay that way.
Create a Shield site, install it, and look at the first real event before you decide on any response. Nothing to cancel, because nothing is billed.
Start with Shield freeFree Preview · 10,000 events per site per day · Terms apply