SAP BTP free tier is a consumption model that lets developers use many SAP BTP services at no cost and with no time limit, through either a Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) or SAP BTP Enterprise Agreement (BTPEA) account. Unlike the BTP trial, which is a temporary 90-day sandbox, the free tier model lives inside a productive commercial account and never expires as long as that account stays active. If you want to learn BTP, prototype apps, or evaluate services without a countdown timer, the free tier is the right starting point.
This guide explains what the free tier model includes, how it differs from the trial, which services offer free tier plans, how to set up an account, and what to watch out for with quotas and limits. It builds on the concepts covered in What is SAP BTP?.
What is the SAP BTP Free Tier?
The SAP BTP free tier model is not a separate product or a special account type. It is a consumption option available within two types of commercial BTP accounts:
- Pay-As-You-Go (PAYG) — A commercial account where you pay for what you consume. You sign up with a credit card, and SAP meters your usage of paid service plans monthly. The free tier plans within this account cost nothing.
- SAP BTP Enterprise Agreement (BTPEA) — A contract-based commercial account with pre-purchased capacity. Free tier plans are available in addition to your contracted entitlements.
Within either account type, services expose different plans. A plan defines the service tier, quota, and pricing model. SAP groups these into three categories:
- Free tier plans — Generous-but-limited quotas at no cost. You can create instances up to the plan's quota without being charged. Example: SAP HANA Cloud's free tier plan gives you one HANA instance at a specified memory and compute size.
- Always-free plans — Services that are free without metering, typically low-volume utility services. These do not count against paid usage.
- Paid plans — Standard metered or subscription plans. If you assign and use these, billing applies.
The key insight is that a single account contains all three plan types. You can run a free tier HANA instance alongside a paid Integration Suite subscription in the same subaccount. The free tier plans simply never generate charges as long as you stay within their limits.
Free Tier vs Trial Account
This is one of the most common points of confusion. The table below clarifies the differences:
| Aspect | Free Tier Model | Trial Account |
|---|---|---|
| Time limit | No time limit | 90 days |
| Account type | Pay-As-Go or BTPEA (commercial) | Standalone trial (non-commercial) |
| Service plans | Free tier, always-free, and paid plans | Pre-configured set of trial services |
| Cost | Free for free tier plans; paid for paid plans | Free |
| Production use | Allowed with paid plans (not with free tier plans) | Not allowed |
| Region | Choose any available BTP region | Limited trial regions |
| When it ends | Persists as long as the account is active | Account is shut down and data is deleted |
| Best for | Ongoing learning, prototyping, evaluation | Short evaluation, quick tutorials |
The practical takeaway: use the trial when you want a fast, no-commitment test of BTP without creating a commercial account. Use the free tier model when you want ongoing access for learning, building portfolios, or running prototypes over weeks and months.
Which Services Have Free Tier Plans?
SAP maintains the current list in the BTP Discovery Center (discovery-center.cloud.sap), and the catalog evolves as SAP adds and updates plans. The following services commonly offer free tier plans as of this writing:
Application Development and Runtime
- SAP HANA Cloud — One free tier HANA database instance with a defined memory/compute size. Enough for development, prototyping, and small data sets.
- SAP Business Application Studio (BAS) — The cloud IDE. Free tier access lets you create dev spaces and build SAPUI5, CAP, and Fiori apps in the browser.
- Cloud Foundry runtime — Free tier memory and compute quota for running applications in a Cloud Foundry space.
- Kyma runtime — Free tier units for the managed Kubernetes environment.
Integration
- SAP Integration Suite — A free tier plan that includes Cloud Integration (process integration), API Management, and Event Mesh with usage limits suitable for development and testing.
AI and Data
- SAP AI Core — Free tier access to the AI runtime and orchestration, including the Generative AI Hub for foundation model access.
- SAP Datasphere — Free tier for the data warehouse service, with limits on storage and compute.
Cross-Cutting Services
- Destination Service and Connectivity Service — Always-free plans for connecting applications to remote and on-premise systems.
- SAP Cloud Identity Services (IAS/IPS) — Free tier for authentication, authorization, and user provisioning.
- XSUAA — The authorization and trust service for Cloud Foundry apps. Free for development use.
To check the exact free tier quota for any service, open the Discovery Center, find the service, and look at its plan details. The quota is expressed per service instance (for example, "1 HANA instance") or per usage metric (for example, "10 GB storage").
How to Set Up a Free Tier Account
Setting up the free tier model requires creating a commercial account, not a trial. Here is the step-by-step process:
Step 1: Create a Pay-As-You-Go Account
- Go to the SAP Store or the SAP BTP sign-up page.
- Sign in with your SAP Universal ID (create one for free if you do not have one).
- Choose Pay-As-You-Go as the account type. You will need to provide billing information (credit card) even though free tier plans do not incur charges.
- Select a cloud provider (AWS, Azure, or GCP) and a region closest to you.
- Accept the terms and create the account.
The account provisions within a few minutes. You receive a confirmation email with a link to the BTP cockpit.
Step 2: Open the BTP Cockpit
Navigate to https://cockpit.<region>.hana.ondemand.com and sign in. You will see your
global account with a default subaccount already created.
Step 3: Assign Entitlements
Free tier plans are available as entitlements. To make a service's free tier plan available in a subaccount:
- Open the subaccount.
- Go to Entitlements > Configure Entitlements.
- Find the service (for example, SAP HANA Cloud).
- Add the free plan and assign quota (for example, 1 instance).
Step 4: Create Service Instances
Once the entitlement is assigned, go to Service Marketplace, find the service, and create an instance using the free tier plan. The instance is provisioned and ready to bind to your applications.
You can also do this from the command line with the btp CLI:
# Log in to your global account
btp login --url https://cpcli.cf.eu10.hana.ondemand.com --user your@email.com
# Assign the free tier entitlement for HANA Cloud to a subaccount
btp assign accounts/subscription \
--subaccount <subaccount-id> \
--app hana-cloud \
--plan hana-free
# Create a service instance in Cloud Foundry
cf create-service hana-cloud hana-free my-hana-instance
Limits and Quotas
Free tier plans have defined quotas, and understanding how they work prevents surprises.
Per-instance quotas. Each free tier plan specifies what you get. For HANA Cloud, the free tier plan defines the maximum memory and compute for the instance. For the Cloud Foundry runtime, it defines the total memory available across all apps in the space.
Service instance limits. Most free tier plans allow a limited number of instances. For example, you might get exactly one free tier HANA database. If you try to create a second instance using the free plan, the platform rejects it.
What happens when you hit the limit. This is the important part: you are not charged. The platform simply prevents you from creating additional resources. If you need more, you must explicitly switch to a paid plan. There is no surprise billing.
Quota is per subaccount. Free tier entitlements are assigned at the subaccount level. If you want separate free tier instances in different projects, create separate subaccounts and assign the free tier plan to each.
Auto-shutdown. Some free tier services, notably HANA Cloud, automatically shut down idle instances to conserve resources. Your data is preserved; you just need to restart the instance when you come back. This is a cost-saving mechanism, not a quota issue.
Developing on Free Tier
The free tier model is well-suited for real development work. Here is what you can realistically build:
- Full CAP applications with HANA Cloud persistence, XSUAA authentication, and SAPUI5 or Fiori elements frontends. The free tier covers every layer of a typical BTP app.
- Integration flows using Integration Suite to connect APIs, transform data, and orchestrate processes between systems.
- AI-powered applications using AI Core and the Generative AI Hub to embed foundation model capabilities into your apps.
- Kubernetes workloads on Kyma for microservices architectures.
SAP Business Application Studio on Free Tier
BAS is the recommended cloud IDE for free tier development. It provides pre-configured dev spaces for SAPUI5, CAP, ABAP, and mobile development. You launch it from the BTP cockpit, and it gives you a full VS Code-based environment in the browser with the SAP extensions pre-installed.
To start:
- In the cockpit, go to Service Marketplace > SAP Business Application Studio.
- Create a subscription using the free plan.
- Click Go to Application to open BAS.
- Create a dev space and start building.
From BAS, you can scaffold CAP projects, generate Fiori elements UIs, deploy to Cloud Foundry, and test against HANA Cloud, all within the free tier quotas.
Free Tier with AI Coding Assistants
The BTP free tier is a learning environment, and AI coding assistants dramatically shorten the learning curve. The challenge is that general-purpose assistants frequently produce outdated or incorrect BTP guidance: wrong service names, deprecated CLI commands, or configuration that ignores SAP conventions like entitlements, role collections, and MTA deployment descriptors.
SAP Skills (a community-maintained, open-source collection of plugins for AI coding assistants like Claude Code, Cursor, and GitHub Copilot, not an official SAP product) solves this by giving your assistant accurate, current BTP context. Each skill is a curated reference for a specific SAP technology, capturing real names, plans, CLI commands, and configuration patterns.
Install the core BTP skill to give your assistant accurate free tier context:
npx skills add secondsky/sap-skills --skill sap-btp-cloud-platform
For deeper coverage of specific services you will use on free tier:
# Best practices for BTP architecture and governance
npx skills add secondsky/sap-skills --skill sap-btp-best-practices
# CAP development (pairs with free tier HANA Cloud + Cloud Foundry)
npx skills add secondsky/sap-skills --skill sap-cap-capire
# Business Application Studio workflows
npx skills add secondsky/sap-skills --skill sap-btp-business-application-studio
# HANA Cloud CLI and administration
npx skills add secondsky/sap-skills --skill sap-hana-cli
With these skills loaded, your assistant can reliably scaffold a free tier entitlement script, draft an MTA deployment descriptor, generate a CAP data model, and explain why a service instance creation failed, all with accurate, current BTP context.
FAQ
For the full FAQ list, see the frontmatter at the top of this page. Here are expanded answers to the most common questions.
Can I run a real project on free tier indefinitely? Yes, as long as you stay within the free tier quotas and do not need production-grade SLAs, you can run prototypes, demos, and learning projects indefinitely. Many developers keep a free tier subaccount as a permanent sandbox.
Do I need a credit card for free tier? Yes, because free tier plans live inside a Pay-As-You-Go or BTPEA account. The credit card is required for the account setup, but free tier plans generate zero charges. You are only billed if you explicitly consume paid plans.
Can I add collaborators to my free tier subaccount? Yes. You can add users to your subaccount and assign role collections, just like any BTP subaccount. Each user needs an SAP Universal ID.
Getting Started Checklist
- Create a Pay-As-You-Go account on the SAP Store with your SAP Universal ID.
- Choose a region and provider near you.
- Open the BTP cockpit and assign free tier entitlements to your subaccount.
- Subscribe to SAP Business Application Studio using the free plan.
- Create a free tier HANA Cloud instance for database persistence.
- Install the SAP Skills for BTP, CAP, and HANA Cloud to accelerate your development.
- Build and deploy your first CAP app to Cloud Foundry using the free tier runtime.
The free tier model removes the time pressure of the trial while still costing nothing. For anyone serious about learning or prototyping on SAP BTP, it is the best starting point.