For years the standard advice for "free Instagram automation" was one word: ManyChat. A thousand free contacts was enough to run a real account, and the advice was correct.
In March 2026 the free tier was cut to 25 contacts. This post is the updated advice.
What 25 contacts means in practice
A contact is a person, not a message — and the count is cumulative. The first 25 people who ever trigger your automation occupy the slots, including the one who commented "😂" once in April and never returned. There is no natural decay; pruning is manual.
Run the number against your own account: if a single reel gets forty "link please" comments, the free tier is exhausted before lunch on day one. Twenty-five contacts is a demo of the product. It is a perfectly good demo — but the correct comparison set for it is other tools' demos, not other tools' free plans.
The advice did not age badly. The tier did. The tool is the same product it was; the free version stopped being a version of it.
Who should stay on ManyChat anyway
Honesty about the competitor first: if you are going to pay regardless, ManyChat remains the most feature-complete flow builder in the category, its template ecosystem is unmatched, and if you run Facebook and Telegram alongside Instagram, consolidation there is worth real money. The full comparison covers where it beats us and where it does not.
This post is only about the word "free."
The alternatives, by what you actually need
You need volume, not intelligence — predictable comments, template answers: LinkDM (about 1,000 DMs a month advertised), ReplyRush (about 1,500), CreatorFlow and InstantDM (about 500 each). All metered on sends, all on the official API. Numbers as advertised in August 2026; verify, they move.
You need replies that read like you wrote them — real questions, in real language, including Hinglish and code-mixed comments: that is our lane. 100 AI replies a month free, templates and triggers uncapped, no card. The free-tier comparison by unit explains why the units matter more than the numbers.
You need flows — multi-step sequences, quizzes, drip campaigns: nobody serious gives that away free any more, and the tools that claim to are worth the ten-second password check before anything else.
Migrating without losing your triggers
Whatever you move to, the checklist is the same: export your keyword list first (ManyChat's flows export exists precisely for this), rebuild the top three automations only — the long tail was probably never firing — and run the old and new tool in parallel for nothing; run them on different posts instead, because two tools answering one comment is the fastest way to look like a bot. Then read what free automation costs you anyway, because the migration afternoon is the honest price of the move.