Free editions, tracked

Read the terms before the limits

The caps are what everybody compares and the least decisive thing on the page. Two questions matter more, and neither is a number: whether the license permits the work you intend to do, and whether the edition can reach a conclusion or only build a model. A free edition licensed for learning is not licensed for work, and an edition with its experiment runner disabled can model a process without ever comparing two versions of it.

Bizagi ModelerBizagiNever expires

Bizagi Modeler. The modeling application and its four simulation levels are free for an individual user, with local storage and no collaboration. The freeware agreement, a 2020 version, grants a perpetual license on any number of computers, is not limited to non commercial work, and bars only using the software to provide commercial IT services to third parties. The limit is the depth of the simulation rather than a cap on model size: it reaches resources and calendars, and stops short of the materials and batching a discrete event engine carries.

ProcessModelProcessModel, Inc.Never expires

Personal License. A free trial starts when the product is installed, runs three days, and extends to fourteen by signing in with an email address. When it ends the product keeps working as a permanent free tier: three variables, three attributes, one array and one scenario per model, six lines of action logic and six builder tiles per field, and runs of up to seven simulated days. There is no limit on model size, the full results report stays, and nothing is watermarked. The bridge that lets a customer's own AI app work in a model is part of the Professional license and is off here. Commercial use is permitted, which distinguishes it from at least one other free edition in this comparison.

ArenaRockwell AutomationNever expires

Student and demo edition. A size limited demo of the Professional edition, with its templates and features. The publisher describes it for commercial customers as supporting proof of concept models and the exercises in its e-learning course, and for academic users as supporting the textbook exercises, and the student version's terms prohibit commercial use. Whether work done in the demo may be used for production decisions is not stated, and no time limit is stated.

AnyLogicThe AnyLogic CompanyNever expires

Personal Learning Edition. Free and it does not expire, but the license permits teaching and self education only: the agreement states that using the software, models or model output for commercial purposes or research is prohibited. Technical caps apply on top, including a maximum of ten agent types, a five hour limit on modeled time outside one library, fifty thousand dynamically created agents, and two hundred flowchart blocks per agent type.

FlexSimAutodeskNever expires

FlexSim Express. Free, as the product's default unlicensed state: a new installation runs in it, and no time limit is stated. The publisher's own knowledge base limits its use to testing, evaluation and viewing models, with thirty objects, thirty five process flow activities and the Experimenter disabled. Models can be built and saved inside those limits.

iGrafxiGrafxNo free edition

No permanent free edition is published for this product. Evaluating it begins with a conversation.

SimioSimio LLC, an Aegis Software companyNo free edition

No permanent free edition is published for this product. Evaluating it begins with a conversation.

Simul8MinitabNo free edition

No permanent free edition is published for this product. Evaluating it begins with a conversation.

What the table says

5 of 8 never expire. This category gives away more than most, and the generosity is real. What it does not give away uniformly is permission.

The license is the thing to read. At least one free edition here is capable, permanent and explicitly prohibits commercial use and research. Another builds and saves models but disables the component that compares scenarios, which for most people is why the model existed. Neither restriction is a size limit and neither appears in a caps table.

3 products have none at all: iGrafx, Simio, Simul8. That is a clean answer and worth stating rather than leaving a reader to search for it.

The longer argument, with what each cap actually stops you doing, is in the roundup. What it costs once you outgrow the free edition is a different question, and mostly unanswerable: see the Pricing Transparency Index.