Is Shortwave Free? Free Plan Limits and Trial Terms

Older reviews still describe Shortwave as a freemium AI Gmail client. Load its own pricing page in August 2026 and that is no longer what you see. The tier structure has changed more than once, and third-party posts describing an old free plan are one of the most common sources of confusion new buyers walk in with.

This page answers one question and dates its answer. If you want the full plan breakdown or a per-tier AI-limit table, that sits on the sibling pricing post; here we deal only with what free means today and what happens the moment you cancel.

The short answer#

Shortwave does not offer a permanently free plan any more. When we loaded shortwave.com/pricing on 20 August 2026 it showed three per-seat paid tiers — Business, Premier and Max — plus a 14-day free trial. There was no fourth column, no linked-to legacy free page, and no anonymous or ad-supported mode.

The 14-day trial gives full access to a paid tier so you can test the AI on your real mail. The trial is time-boxed, not usage-boxed: it ends on day 14 whether you have run one query or a thousand.

If you cancel during the trial or the paid subscription lapses, the AI features stop but your Gmail account itself is untouched. Shortwave is a client on top of Gmail — the mail lives at Google, not at Shortwave, so archives, labels and threads all remain in Gmail exactly as they were.

Criteria that actually matter when you ask 'is it free?'#

'Free' is a family of different questions. Which one you are asking decides which Shortwave answer applies to you, and whether that answer is any use.

The six meanings below cover almost every search that lands on this page. They are not equivalent, and Shortwave says no to some and yes to others.

• Permanently free tier — a plan you can stay on forever without paying. Shortwave: no, not since the pricing overhaul.
• Free trial of a paid plan — full access for a set period. Shortwave: yes, 14 days.
• Free of a credit card at signup — trial without card capture. Shortwave: page does not state this either way; assume a card may be required and confirm at checkout.
• Free of AI cost inside the plan — no metered AI charges on top. Shortwave: yes on the paid tiers; AI usage is included, gated by daily quotas and model class rather than a metered bill.
• Free of provider lock-in — you can leave without losing mail. Shortwave: yes, because Gmail remains the source of truth.
• Free to use across Gmail and Outlook — no. Shortwave connects to Gmail only.

Scoring 'free' against what Shortwave actually offers#

Here is the mapping laid out as a scoring table. Each row is one meaning of free, what Shortwave provides against it, and the caveat you should hold in your head next to the answer.

A worked example: two weeks on the trial, then a decision#

The trial is only useful if you spend it on the questions that decide your purchase. Most people burn the first week clicking around, then extend nothing on the second and either lapse or convert on a hunch. Do it in this order and the second week actually tells you something.

1. 1

   Day 1 — connect the mailbox you actually use

   Sign in with the Google account that carries your real archive, not a test one. Shortwave's AI reads the mail it can see, so the trial only reflects your workload if it can see your workload.

2. 2

   Days 2–3 — find your oldest thread that still matters

   Search for a message from more than a year back that you would need if it came up in a meeting. Every paid tier caps how far the AI may search — this tells you whether the entry tier reaches your archive or you need one above it.

3. 3

   Days 4–6 — run summaries and drafts on the busy morning

   Every summary, every AI draft, every 'find me that' spends the daily AI quota. Doing it on a real Monday shows you the shape of a real day; doing it on a quiet Saturday will underestimate your usage by half.

4. 4

   Days 7–10 — write the three standing rules you actually need

   The entry tier caps the number of AI filters. If your day-30 list of standing rules is longer than the entry-tier cap, the trial has already decided your tier before you look at price.

5. 5

   Days 11–13 — cancel and confirm nothing broke

   Cancel from the account page one day before the trial ends. Reload Gmail directly in a browser tab. Every message, label and thread should still be there — Shortwave is a client on top of Gmail, so cancelling removes the AI, not the mail.

6. 6

   Day 14 — decide on evidence, not on a hunch

   You now know whether your archive fits the entry-tier search window, whether your busy-day quota is enough, and whether your rules fit the filter cap. That is a purchase decision. A month of 'I liked it' is not.

Red flags in older 'Shortwave is free' articles#

Most posts that put Shortwave on a 'best free AI email' list were true when they were written and have not been updated since. Here is how to spot one, so a stale summary does not become a wrong purchase.

• Wording like 'free forever' or 'permanently free plan' — the pricing page has not shown one in some time. If the article was written before mid-2025 and not updated, treat this claim as expired.
• A tier called 'Free' or 'Personal' compared against a 'Pro' — that structure was retired. Today's plans are Business, Premier and Max, with a trial rather than a free tier.
• A specific daily AI quota number stated as fact — quotas have moved and are given as ranges and multiples on the current page. Any absolute number not read on shortwave.com today is a guess.
• A claim that the free tier includes advanced AI search over your whole archive — the AI search reach is a tier lever now, not a free feature.
• No date on the article, or a date more than six months old — the tier line-up in this category moves quarterly. Age is a red flag on its own.

What we'd pick, and why — honestly#

Full disclosure: we build AI Emaily, so read this section as an interested party summarising the trade-offs rather than as an impartial ranking. We publish our own trial terms and our own limits because we can verify them — the same standard that stops us guessing at anyone else's.

The honest split is by inbox, not by budget. If your work is Gmail-only, you archive obsessively, and the thing you buy an AI mail client to do is semantic search over four years of your own mail, Shortwave has built harder on that specific problem than we have and it is the more natural choice — the 14-day trial is designed for exactly that evaluation.

If your work sits across Gmail, Outlook or an IMAP mailbox, or you want the AI to do the reply for approval rather than help you write it, we are the shape you are looking for. AI Emaily runs one inbox across Gmail, Outlook and IMAP, has three authority modes — Manual, Copilot and Autopilot — with approve-before-send on by default, undo on every agent action, and an audit log of everything the agent did. Drafting voice comes from a Personal Context you write plus per-client profiles you set, not from mining your sent mail.

• Where we are behind: Shortwave is a Gmail-native client and its semantic search over the Gmail archive is what it was built to do. We do not claim parity on that single axis.
• Where we are limited: the desktop app is Apple Silicon and Windows only, built as an Electron shell rather than a native binary. No Linux build. Android is a PWA today, native app on the roadmap.
• Where the shapes actually differ: Shortwave sells three per-seat paid tiers with a 14-day trial; AI Emaily sells Pro and Team with a 7-day trial that requires a card and charges nothing if you cancel before day 7.

The short answer, once more#

Shortwave is not free. As of August 2026 its pricing page shows three per-seat paid tiers with a 14-day trial, and no permanently free plan. Older articles that describe one are describing a structure the vendor has retired for new signups.

The trial is the free evaluation path. Two weeks with your real archive, with a cancellation that leaves your Gmail untouched. If you spend it on the questions that decide your tier — how far back the AI can search, how many rules you need to run, how much of your day spends AI requests — the trial will tell you what a review cannot.

For today's exact figures and terms, read shortwave.com/pricing beside this page and note the date on both.