Is FutureMe Still Free? What Changed and What It Costs Now

The short version. No. FutureMe used to let anyone send one letter to their future self at no cost, and that free letter is gone. Writing there now needs a paid annual plan: $2 a year for one letter or $12 a year for unlimited letters with images and video. If the free version is what you came for, you will want somewhere else.

So is FutureMe still free?

No. The free letter is the thing almost everyone remembers FutureMe for, and it is the thing that changed. The site is a subscription now, so the cheapest way to write anything is a paid plan.

Reading a letter someone already sent you stays free. The charge applies to writing and scheduling.

What FutureMe costs now

• The Little Hit, $2 a year. One letter a year.
• Big Energy, $12 a year. Unlimited letters, with images and video.

Both are billed annually. Pricing moves, so check FutureMe before you pay, and treat the figures here as what was true when this page was last revised.

Why it stopped being free

A letter scheduled ten years out is ten years of storage, backups and working deliverability, paid for on the day it was written. FutureMe has been carrying that since 2002 on a free tier, and a subscription is the straightforward way to fund it.

Worth saying plainly: charging for this is reasonable. The awkward part for anyone arriving now is that the free option they were told about no longer exists.

Is FutureMe safe?

Two separate questions hide inside that one, and they have different answers.

Will it still be there? Its record is long. FutureMe has been running since 2002 and has delivered millions of letters, which is a far better durability signal than most services in this category can offer.

Can anyone read it? Letters on FutureMe are stored as readable text. The service can read them, and so can anyone who reaches that storage. For a cheerful note to yourself that is fine. For anything you would be uncomfortable having read by a stranger, it matters, and it is the reason end-to-end encryption exists.

Where to write to your future self instead

• timedrop.it. Your first letter is free with no account. Contents are encrypted in your browser before they reach us, so we store ciphertext and never the words. Members get four sealed letters a year, photos and a voice note, plus unlock dates up to ten years out.
• Scheduled email. Gmail and tools like Boomerang will send a message to yourself on a date. Free, and limited to roughly a year in practice. Your mail provider reads it, and the plan quietly depends on you keeping that address.
• A paper letter. Costs nothing, survives any company closing and carries your handwriting. It also depends entirely on you remembering where you put it.

We build one of these, so read that list with the appropriate suspicion. The honest summary is below.

Which should you choose?

• Already paying for FutureMe and happy with it: stay. $2 a year is a fair price and the service has earned its reputation.
• You wanted the free letter: try timedrop.it or scheduled email.
• The letter is private, or carries photos or a voice: pick something encrypted.
• Sending it more than a year out: a scheduled email will struggle.