Flipbooks AI vs Heyzine: Free Plans, Branding and Prices Compared

Founder of Flipbooks AI

August 6, 2026

The Short Answer

Choose Flipbooks AI if your PDF is finished and you want it online quickly with your own logo, brand colours, a page turn effect that suits the document and, on the top plan, background music and a separate password for each reader. The paid ladder costs the same as Heyzine's to the dollar, so the real question is what the money buys, and here it buys how the flipbook looks and behaves for the people reading it rather than storage and seats.

Choose Heyzine if you want five free flipbooks instead of three, API access at no cost, reader statistics, lead capture forms, team seats, a custom DNS domain, or the option to buy a fixed pack of flipbooks outright instead of subscribing. Those are real capabilities Flipbooks AI does not have at any price, and their free password protection with unlimited usernames and passwords is more generous than our single shared password.

Flipbooks AI vs Heyzine at a Glance

Feature	Flipbooks AI	Heyzine
Password protection on the free plan	Yes	Yes
No ads beside your flipbook on any plan	Yes	Yes
Readers open it from a link with no sign up	Yes	Yes
Prices published on a pricing page of their own	Yes	No
Plan prices match across the vendor's own pages	Yes	No
The same price wherever in the world you check from	Yes	No
Flipbook stays online even if it gets no visits	Yes	Not guaranteed after year one
How long a flipbook is guaranteed to stay online	Until you delete it	At least one year, registered users
What the cheapest paid plan does to the vendor mark	Removes it, or swaps in your own logo	Removes it, or swaps in your own logo
Branding removed on every paid option	Every plan, from $59 a year	Every subscription; packs not stated
Cost of choosing which sites may embed your flipbook	$108 a year, on Plus	$108 a year, on Professional

Flipbooks AI wins 6 of these 11 rows and loses none. They are rows we picked, so read them that way. Every figure was checked against Heyzine's own public pages in August 2026, and the sections below say plainly where Heyzine is the better buy.

Pricing Compared

The first thing to say about this comparison is that the price ladders match. Checked on Heyzine's plan table in August 2026, Standard is $5 a month billed yearly, which is $59 a year, with a note beside it that a monthly plan is not available. Professional is $9 a month billed yearly, which is $108 a year, or $14 billed monthly. Premium is $19 a month billed yearly, which is $228 a year, or $29 billed monthly. Flipbooks AI sells Starter at $59 a year, annual only, Plus at $14 a month or $108 a year, and Ultra at $29 a month or $228 a year. The same three numbers, in the same order.

What the money buys is where the two part company. Heyzine's steps mostly add volume and reach: storage moves from 1 GB free to 10, 20 and 40 GB, account users from 1 to 3, 10 and 20, then Professional brings reader statistics, a Google Analytics integration, lead generation forms, a custom flipbook URL and domain restriction, and Premium adds a digital bookshelf, a custom DNS domain, advanced password protection and priority support. Our steps add reader facing capability instead. Every paid plan removes the corner mark, unlocks brand colours and opens up the page turn effects the free plan does not carry, Plus adds the embed code and its allowed domain list, and Ultra adds background music and a separate password for each reader. Heyzine also sells one time packs, 10 flipbooks for $29 up to 50 for $55, which we do not.

Two practical notes if you go and check their prices yourself, because it is harder than it should be. Heyzine has no pricing page: /pricing and /plans both return 404, and the plans live in a section of the homepage. Their terms of service still quote $49, $99 and $203 a year, which are not the figures on the live table, and the table geo-localises, so some regions see euro numbers such as €8 a month for Professional that are different amounts rather than a converted symbol. Take the live table as the truth and ignore everything else, including third party listings. Our three prices sit on one page in USD.

What Each Free Plan Really Gives You

Heyzine's free tier, called Basic in their terms, is the more generous of the two on allowance and that deserves to be said plainly. It lists five free flipbooks, unlimited pages, no ads, API access, 1 GB of storage, one account user and password protection, and the terms repeat it almost word for word. Flipbooks AI keeps three flipbooks live at a time on the same 1 GB, with the magazine page turn effect only and a small corner mark on the published flipbook. Five beats three, and API access on a plan that costs nothing is genuinely unusual.

Ours holds up on the things that are easy to overlook. There is no page cap, so a 300 page catalogue goes up whole. No ads sit beside the reader. Readers never need an account. A single shared password is allowed while you are still on the free plan, and the flipbook is never listed in a public directory. The three flipbook allowance is a rolling one rather than a lifetime count: delete a flipbook and the slot comes back straight away, so a free account can publish far more than three documents over a year.

The difference that catches people out is what happens later. Heyzine's FAQ sets out three retention rules. An unregistered user's flipbook is removed after a week. For registered users and flipbook packs, the flipbook will be online at least for a year, and after that, visits keep it online while an unused one might be removed. A quiet flipbook is therefore not guaranteed to stay up, which matters if you have printed the link on something. Flipbooks AI has no inactivity rule and a flipbook stays live until you delete it. With either of these two tools, keep the source PDF rather than treating the host as your archive.

Branding and Watermarks

Heyzine gets accused of things it does not do, so start with what is true. It does not stamp a watermark across the pages and it does not show ads, on any plan including free. Their FAQ puts it this way: unlike other services, they do not place watermarks over the flipbook, but they do show a Heyzine logo on the viewer corner, and you can remove it and add your own by subscribing to one of their plans. Their terms describe even the free Basic plan as unlimited pages, ad free, no watermarks. Flipbooks AI does the same thing in the same spirit, a small corner mark on free flipbooks and nothing across the pages.

Removal costs the same at the entry tier. Heyzine's Standard plan, $59 a year in August 2026, includes what they call White branding, described as removing the Heyzine logo and using your own one. On Flipbooks AI every paid plan, starting with Starter at $59 a year, removes the corner mark and lets you put your own logo in its place. The one gap worth knowing before you pay is the one time packs. Their FAQ ties logo removal to subscribing to one of the plans, and the pack listing says nothing either way about branding, so ask them first if buying a pack for unbranded output is the plan.

The same $59 does slightly more on our side. Removing the mark also unlocks brand colours for the reader controls, so the chrome around your pages matches your palette rather than only carrying your logo. Heyzine's published plan features put white branding at that tier and their heavier identity work further up the ladder, with a custom flipbook URL at Professional and a custom DNS domain at Premium. If the address a reader sees matters to you more than the colours around the page, that is a fair reason to spend the money there instead.

Privacy and Who Can Find Your Flipbook

This is usually the row where flipbook comparisons find daylight, and between these two there is none. Heyzine is private by link on every tier including free, and it commits to that in two places. The FAQ says they do not publish your flipbooks anywhere and that only people with the link can view them, and the terms say uploaded content will not be shared or made public without the owner's express consent. There is no public gallery to opt out of, and their digital bookshelf is a sharing page an owner builds on Premium, not a listing of other people's documents. Flipbooks AI works the same way: link only, never listed, never submitted to search by us.

On passwords their free plan is the stronger one. Password protection appears on the free tier's own bullet list, and the feature is described as protecting flipbooks with unlimited usernames and passwords, which is real multi credential access rather than one shared code. Only the advanced form, one time access emails that stop a password being passed around, is held back for Premium at $228 a year. Flipbooks AI allows one shared password on the free plan and gives each reader their own password on Ultra, also $228 a year. At $0, they give more.

One caveat is worth being blunt about, and most of it is about our own product. A shared link is a public URL. While researching this page in August 2026, Heyzine flipbook pages and PDFs served from their CDN came back in ordinary web searches, which is crawling rather than any policy of publishing on their part, and the same can happen to a link of ours that ends up somewhere public. On Flipbooks AI a password gates the reader interface rather than the file behind it, so if a document genuinely must not leak, our tool is not a substitute for a system with real access control. We did not test how Heyzine's password behaves at that level, so treat their side as unchecked rather than assuming it matches ours.

Here is what is known and what is not, because part of the honest answer is a shrug. No Heyzine page that can be read gates iframe embedding by plan: their FAQ answers the embedding question by pointing at the iframe codes in the share menu without naming a plan, and embedding is not a row on their plan table at all. That is not the same as confirming a free account can embed, and it could not be confirmed either way in August 2026. If embedding from a free account is your deciding factor, ask them before you commit. On Flipbooks AI the embed code starts on Plus, $14 a month or $108 a year.

Controlling who may embed costs the same on both sides, which is why it sits in the table as a tie rather than a win. Heyzine's domains restriction, described as choosing which websites can embed your flipbooks, is a Professional feature at $9 a month billed yearly, $108 a year, or $14 billed monthly. Our allowed domain list arrives on Plus at the same $108 a year. So if you are putting a flipbook on a site you own and you care that nobody else can frame it somewhere you have not approved, budget for that tier whichever of the two you pick.

Plain link sharing is comparable, and with either of these two products sharing is link based, so a reader opens the flipbook in a browser from the URL. Inside the page, Heyzine does more. They support web iframes, so a flipbook can hold maps, calendars, agendas, panoramas, forms or payment gateways rather than flat pages, and from Professional they add reader statistics, a Google Analytics integration and lead generation forms. If your flipbook is a working sales asset that has to capture and measure, that combination is the reason to choose them, and we have no answer to it.

Ease of Use and What Each Tool Is For

Heyzine is the broader product and people like it: 4.9 out of 5 from 60 reviews on Capterra. Its ladder runs from a free tier that already includes API access up to 40 GB of storage, 20 account users, reader statistics and lead forms, a digital bookshelf and a custom DNS domain, and its in page web iframes let a flipbook carry live content. If you are building a publication that has to do a job beyond being read, that surface area is the whole point, and no amount of price matching changes it.

Flipbooks AI is narrower on purpose, and it is easier to say what it is not. There is no template gallery, no in tool page editor, no custom domains, no team seats and no API. The design work already happened wherever you made the PDF. You upload the finished file, choose a page turn effect, set a password or your colours if you are paying, and share the link. Three of those five gaps are ones Heyzine's own plan table fills: API access from the free tier up, as many as 20 account users, and a custom DNS domain on Premium. If one of those three is on your list, take Heyzine and do not look back, because we will not grow into it for you.

What the same money buys here is the reading experience. Every paid plan removes the corner mark, unlocks brand colours and opens up the page turn effects the free plan does not carry, Plus adds the embed code and its allowed domain list, and Ultra adds background music and a separate password for each reader. Around that sit the smaller operational things this comparison kept turning up: prices on a page of their own, figures that match everywhere on the site, one set of numbers wherever you check from, and no inactivity rule deciding whether a quiet flipbook stays online. Pick by the document. Finished and designed elsewhere points here. Assembled, measured or wired into a stack points there.

Who Should Choose Which

Choose Flipbooks AI if

Your PDF is finished and you want it online, branded and readable in a couple of minutes
You want brand colours as well as your own logo on the cheapest paid plan, $59 a year
You want background music or a separate password for each reader, at $228 a year
You do not want an inactivity rule deciding whether a quiet flipbook stays online

Choose Heyzine if

You want five free flipbooks instead of three, with API access included at $0
You need reader statistics, a Google Analytics integration or lead capture forms, from $108 a year
You need team seats, a custom DNS domain or a digital bookshelf, none of which Flipbooks AI offers at any price
You would rather buy a one time pack, 10 flipbooks for $29 up to 50 for $55, than take a subscription, or you need free password protection with unlimited usernames

How to Switch from Heyzine to Flipbooks AI

There is no import step, because a flipbook is always built from a source document. If you still have the PDF you uploaded, the move takes about as long as one upload.

Get the source PDF back first. Heyzine promises registered users and flipbook packs that a flipbook will be online at least for a year, and says an unused one might be removed after that, so your own copy of the file is the archive, not their hosting. Use the original export rather than anything pulled out of the reader, so the text stays sharp and internal links survive.
List what lives in Heyzine and not in the PDF. Embedded web iframes such as maps, calendars, forms or payment gateways, the usernames and passwords you set, and any custom flipbook URL were configured inside their account and do not travel with the file. Note which page each one sits on before you stop paying, because that list is what you will rebuild.
Export the numbers you want to keep. Reader statistics, the Google Analytics integration and lead generation form entries are Professional tier features that report inside the Heyzine account. Download or record anything you will need later, because a PDF carries none of it and Flipbooks AI has no way to import reporting history.
Upload the PDF to Flipbooks AI and set it up. Drop the file on the create page, pick a page turn effect, add a password if the document is private, and set your own logo and brand colours if you are on a paid plan. Preview the flipbook before publishing, and remember that the free plan keeps three live at a time with the magazine effect.
Repoint every link, then retire the old one. Embeds, QR codes, email signatures and social posts still point at the Heyzine URL. Keep the old flipbook live while you swap them over, and if you were using their domains restriction, recreate that list as the allowed domains on Plus so only your sites can frame the new one.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Heyzine free, and what does the free plan include?

Yes. Their free tier, called Basic in the terms of service, lists five free flipbooks, unlimited pages, no ads, API access, 1 GB of storage, one account user and password protection, checked in August 2026. The output still carries a Heyzine logo in the corner of the viewer. On allowance it beats our free plan, which keeps three flipbooks live at a time on the same 1 GB, offers the magazine page turn effect only, and adds a small Flipbooks AI corner mark.

Does Heyzine put a watermark on free flipbooks?

No, and it is worth being accurate about this because the opposite gets claimed a lot. Their FAQ says that unlike other services they do not place watermarks over the flipbook, but they do show a Heyzine logo on the viewer corner, and that you can remove it and add your own by subscribing to one of their plans. The terms describe even the free plan as ad free with no watermarks. The cheapest plan that removes the corner logo is Standard at $59 a year.

How much does Heyzine cost?

On their plan table in August 2026: Standard is $5 a month billed yearly, which is $59 a year, with a note that a monthly plan is not available; Professional is $9 a month billed yearly, which is $108 a year, or $14 billed monthly; Premium is $19 a month billed yearly, which is $228 a year, or $29 billed monthly. They also sell one time packs at 10 flipbooks for $29, 15 for $33, 25 for $39 and 50 for $55. Ignore the $49, $99 and $203 figures still sitting in their terms of service, which do not match the live table.

Can free Heyzine users password protect a flipbook?

Yes, and this is one place their free plan is more generous than ours. Password protection is on the free tier's bullet list, and the feature is described as protecting flipbooks with unlimited usernames and passwords, so it is proper multi credential access rather than one shared code. Only the advanced form, which sends one time access emails so the password cannot be passed around, is held back for Premium at $228 a year. Flipbooks AI allows one shared password on free and gives each reader their own on Ultra, also $228 a year.

Will my Heyzine flipbook end up in a public gallery or in Google?

Heyzine states it does not publish your flipbooks anywhere and that only people with the link can view them, and the terms repeat that uploaded content is not made public without the owner's consent. There is no public directory, and their digital bookshelf is a sharing page you build yourself on Premium, not a listing of other people's documents. Flipbooks AI works the same way: link only, never listed, never submitted to search by us. What is true of ours, and of any link you paste somewhere public, is that the URL itself is reachable: while researching this page, Heyzine flipbook pages and PDFs on their CDN did come back in ordinary web searches. That is crawling, not a policy of publishing.

How long does Heyzine keep my flipbook online?

Their FAQ gives three rules. An unregistered user's flipbook is removed after a week. For registered users and flipbook packs, the flipbook will be online at least for one year, and after that, visits keep it online while an unused one might be removed. So a flipbook nobody has opened is not guaranteed to stay up once that first year passes. Flipbooks AI has no inactivity rule and a flipbook stays live until you delete it, within the three live flipbooks the free plan allows. Keep the source PDF either way.

Can I embed a Heyzine flipbook on my own site for free?

It could not be confirmed either way, so do not plan around it. No Heyzine page that can be read gates iframe embedding by plan: their FAQ points at the iframe codes in the share menu without naming a plan, and embedding is not a row on the plan table, but nothing states that a free account can embed either. What is confirmed is that restricting which sites may embed is a Professional feature at $108 a year. On Flipbooks AI the embed code and the allowed domain list start on Plus, $14 a month or $108 a year.

Is there a page limit or a file size limit?

Neither of these two tools caps pages. Heyzine lists unlimited pages on every tier including free, and their FAQ says there are no limits beyond the disk space your account has, which is 1 GB free and 10, 20 or 40 GB on the paid tiers. Flipbooks AI sets no page cap either, and the free plan comes with 1 GB. In both products the storage quota, rather than the page count, is what actually stops you. On our side, a very heavy PDF simply takes longer to convert.

Can I import my existing Heyzine flipbooks?

No. Flipbooks AI generates a flipbook from a source document, so switching means uploading the same PDF again, which takes about a minute. Anything you added inside Heyzine, such as embedded web iframes, usernames and passwords, or a custom flipbook URL, is configured in their account rather than in the file, so plan to recreate it. The public URL does not travel either, so repoint your links before you retire the old flipbook.

Is Heyzine a good tool?

Yes, and a comparison that pretended otherwise would not be worth reading. It holds 4.9 out of 5 from 60 reviews on Capterra, its free tier is more generous than ours on flipbook count and includes API access, its free password protection is stronger than ours, and it sells one time packs for people who will not take a subscription. The honest split is that Heyzine goes wide, with analytics, lead forms, seats, custom domains and live content inside the pages, while Flipbooks AI concentrates on getting a finished PDF online and making it look like yours.

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Flipbooks AI vs Heyzine: Which Flipbook Maker Should You Use?