Is Reality Defender free? Partly. Reality Defender's developer API, RealAPI, has a free plan with 50 scans a month and up to 3 seats, but it covers images and audio only; video needs a paid plan (RealAPI pricing). There is no free plan for RealScan, the point and click web app, and no free version of the live call and meeting products. The next step up, Business, shows $399 a month on monthly billing or $319 a month billed annually. So if you want to check a few suspicious images or voice clips and can make an API call, Reality Defender is free. If you need video, a web app without code or more than 50 checks a month, it is not.
This guide covers exactly what the free plan includes, what counts against it, what Business and Enterprise add, the browser extension that is not made by Reality Defender, and free alternatives for one off checks. Prices and limits below were checked on Reality Defender's own pages on Nov 2, 2026.
Is Reality Defender free? The short version
| Product | Who it is for | Free option | Paid price (Nov 2, 2026) |
|---|---|---|---|
| RealAPI | Developers adding detection to an app | Yes: 50 scans a month, up to 3 seats, images and audio | Business $399 a month, or $319 a month billed annually; Enterprise custom |
| RealScan web app | Analysts, journalists, investigators | No free plan listed | Business $399 a month, or $319 a month billed annually; Enterprise custom |
| Live call and meeting detection | Contact centers, security teams | No | Sales quote |
| Chrome extension by chromie.dev | Anyone with a RealAPI key | The extension is free; scans use your RealAPI quota | Same as RealAPI |
Reality Defender launched the free developer tier on July 31, 2025, describing it as 50 free detections a month for "any developer, anywhere" (launch post). At launch it handled audio and images, with video promised later. Video did arrive, but only on paid plans.
What the free RealAPI plan includes
The free plan is listed on the RealAPI product page at $0 a month "for trialing our API." It includes:
- 50 scans a month. The pricing page does not define a scan. Plan as if every file or social media link you submit uses one.
- Up to 3 seats, so a small team can share the quota. Oddly, the paid Business plan lists only 1 seat.
- API keys and an analytics dashboard in the Reality Defender web platform, where you create the key.
- Images and audio. The SDK documentation says plainly that "the free tier only supports uploading audio and image files" (SDK docs).
One small inconsistency on the pricing page: the intro line says the free plan includes "50 image + audio scans per month," while the plan's bullet list shows only "Image analysis." The SDK docs and the launch post both include audio, so audio on free looks intended, but test one clip before you build a voice workflow on it.
File limits are the same across plans, according to the docs: images up to 50 MB (JPG, PNG, GIF, WebP), audio up to 20 MB (MP3, WAV, M4A, AAC, OGG, FLAC, ALAC), and video up to 250 MB and 30 minutes (MP4, MOV) on paid plans. Text files up to 900 KB are also listed as a supported type.
How you actually use the free plan
There is no "paste a link and get a verdict" page on the free plan. You sign up on the Reality Defender platform, create an API key, and then either call the REST API or use one of the official SDKs for Python, TypeScript, Go, Rust or Java (API quickstart). The flow has three steps:
- Request an upload URL (or submit a public social media link instead of a file).
- Upload the file to that URL.
- Poll the result endpoint with the request ID until the analysis finishes.
The API docs say to focus on the "ensemble" result, which combines the scores of several models, and the SDKs normalize scores to a 0 to 1 range. For flagged images, results can include heatmap images that show which regions a model found suspicious.
Social media links work for Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, TikTok and Threads. That is handy on the free plan, but remember that most social links point to videos, and video is a paid feature. Since Sep 25, 2026, image posts are supported too, for public posts on X, Facebook, Instagram and Threads, and only the first image in a multi image post is analyzed (changelog).
Reality Defender pricing beyond the free plan
Both RealAPI and RealScan list the same two paid tiers.
Business shows $399 with the billing toggle on monthly. Switch the toggle to annual billing and the page shows $399 struck through and $319 a month. By our arithmetic that is about $4,788 a year month to month or $3,828 a year on annual billing. Business includes 1,000 scans a month, 1 seat, image, audio and video analysis, supporting detail with results, unlimited API keys, the web platform and chat support (RealScan pricing).
Some review sites list Business as $399 a year. The pricing page's own annual toggle shows a monthly figure, so treat $399 as a monthly price and confirm in checkout before you budget.
Enterprise is custom priced, with custom scan volume, unlimited seats and dedicated support. The live products for calls and meetings, which are the core of Reality Defender's enterprise business, are sold through sales conversations rather than a public price list.
What a scan costs at each level
Free is 50 scans for nothing. Business monthly works out to about 40 cents per scan if you use all 1,000, or about 32 cents on annual billing. Unused scans are not described as rolling over, so assume they do not.
Is the Reality Defender browser extension free?
This is the easiest part to get wrong. The extension that shows up when you search the Chrome Web Store is listed as "Reality Defender" by chromie.dev. Its listing says it was built by Chromie.dev, calls it a "forever free extension," and names an individual developer as the publisher, not Reality Defender (Chrome Web Store listing). When we checked on Nov 2, 2026 it was version 1.2, updated Apr 8, 2026, with no ratings.
We downloaded version 1.2 and read its files. What we found:
- It needs your own Reality Defender API key. The settings page asks for a "Reality Defender API Key" and stores it in Chrome's local extension storage. Without a key, the side panel says to add one before running analysis.
- It does two things: it records 4 seconds of audio from the active tab and sends that clip for analysis, and it lets you upload an image (JPEG, PNG, GIF or WebP, up to 50 MB). It also lists your recent uploads.
- It talks only to Reality Defender's API. The only host it requests access to is Reality Defender's production API domain. It also asks for tab capture, tab and side panel permissions, which fit the audio feature.
So the extension itself costs nothing, but every check uses scans from your RealAPI plan. On the free plan that means 50 checks a month, and video is not part of it. Because it is a third party extension that holds your API key, decide whether you trust the publisher before you paste a key into it.
Reality Defender's own RealScan announcement mentions a Chrome extension for bulk uploads into RealScan, which is a paid product. We could not find that one listed separately, so do not assume a free official extension exists.
What you give up on the free plan
- Video. The biggest gap. Most viral deepfakes are video, and free scans cannot check them.
- The web app. RealScan, with drag and drop uploads, PDF and CSV reports and segment detail for video, has no free plan.
- Volume. 50 scans covers spot checks, not moderation or a busy newsroom.
- Live calls and meetings. Detection for Zoom, Teams and call center audio is enterprise only.
What you do not give up is the detection models themselves. The free plan runs on the same API, and Reality Defender retrains those models often. The changelog shows the image model was retrained for OpenAI GPT Image content on Oct 9, 2026 and for frames from newer video generators, including Google's Veo 3.1, on Oct 15. Both entries warn that scores for the same image can differ from earlier results, so do not compare a score from September with one from today and treat the difference as meaningful.
One more operational detail from the changelog: since Oct 29, 2026, a scan still analyzing after 2 hours ends as UNABLE_TO_EVALUATE, and you have to resubmit it. Some files cannot be evaluated at all, and the product page says so.
What happens to your uploads
Reality Defender's general terms say the company may not use customer media or content to train its models, except as needed to provide the service, while it can still analyze usage and performance data and share it in aggregate or de identified form (terms of use). Read section 5 yourself before you upload anything sensitive, such as evidence or recordings of other people.
Free Reality Defender alternatives for one off checks
If you only need to check a single image or video and have no code, these free options are a better start than a RealAPI key:
| Tool | What it checks | Cost | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hive AI detection Chrome extension | Images, video and text as you browse | Free, no login per Hive | Quick checks while browsing |
| SynthID Detector | Google's invisible watermark | Free | Content that may come from Google tools |
| Content Credentials Verify | C2PA provenance data | Free | Files that may carry signed origin data |
Hive says its Chrome extension checks content with no fees or login (Hive). Watermark and provenance tools work differently from Reality Defender: they can confirm content from tools that take part, but say nothing when the mark or metadata is missing. Our deepfake detection guide explains how to combine all three kinds of signal, and how to check if a video is AI generated walks through a video check step by step, including what independent tests found about commercial detectors. For Google's watermark specifically, see the SynthID Detector guide.
A word on accuracy for any of these: no detector is a verdict machine. A high score is a reason to look harder, not proof. The same lesson applies to text detectors, covered in are AI detectors accurate.
Who should use Reality Defender's free plan
Use it if you are a developer testing whether deepfake detection fits your product, such as checking selfies at signup or voice clips sent to support, and 50 image or audio checks a month is enough to evaluate. It is a real trial of the same API paying customers use, with no card listed as a requirement.
Skip it if you need to check videos, want a web page instead of code, or plan to run more than a handful of checks a week. Start with the free tools above, and look at Reality Defender's tool page and the Business plan only when volume and video justify about $319 to $399 a month.
FAQ
Is Reality Defender free to use?
Yes, with limits. The RealAPI free plan gives 50 scans a month, up to 3 seats, and image and audio analysis through the API and SDKs. Video, the RealScan web app and live call detection all need paid plans.
How much does Reality Defender cost?
Business, for either RealAPI or RealScan, shows $399 a month on monthly billing or $319 a month billed annually, with 1,000 scans a month and 1 seat. Enterprise is custom priced. Prices are from Reality Defender's product pages on Nov 2, 2026.
Does the free plan check videos?
No. Reality Defender's SDK docs say the free tier only supports audio and image files. Video analysis, for MP4 and MOV files up to 250 MB and 30 minutes, starts on the Business plan.
Is there a free Reality Defender browser extension?
There is a free Chrome extension listed as "Reality Defender" by chromie.dev, but it is made by a third party developer, not Reality Defender. It needs your own Reality Defender API key, and each audio or image check uses your plan's scans.
Does Reality Defender use my uploads to train its models?
Its general terms say it may not use customer media or content for training, apart from what is needed to provide the service. It can analyze usage and performance data and share it only in aggregate or de identified form.
What are good free alternatives to Reality Defender?
For quick checks, try Hive's free Chrome extension, Google's SynthID Detector for Google watermarks and Content Credentials Verify for C2PA provenance data. Combine more than one, since each can miss what the others catch.
