Dropstone Lite: Build Real Software for ₹299 a Month in India

When we looked at how developers in India search for AI tools, the same questions kept coming up: "Cursor price in India", "Claude Code price in rupees", "GitHub Copilot price India", "cheapest AI for coding". People were not asking which tool was best. They were asking which one they could afford.

Most answers to that question today are a free tier that runs out by Tuesday, or a plan that costs ₹650 to ₹2,000 a month. There was nothing in between for someone who codes every day but cannot justify a premium subscription.

Lite is that in-between. We set the price in rupees first, at a number that works for a student or an early-career developer, and then worked out how much usage we could give at that price. The answer was twice the usage of Free, with the daily limits removed.

₹299 is not a chatbot that suggests a line of code. It is the same Dropstone agent that runs on every plan, and it does the work end to end. Here is the kind of thing you can build on Lite:

• Your portfolio or startup landing page, designed and built from one conversation.
• A full-stack web app with a login, a database, an admin dashboard and an API, in Next.js, Django, Express or whatever you already use.
• Your college or final-year project, with the agent explaining each part as it writes it, so you can answer the viva too.
• A WhatsApp or Telegram bot, a scraper, or the script that automates the boring part of your job.
• A mobile app in React Native or Flutter, from the first screen to a working build.
• Bug fixes in a codebase you did not write. Paste the error or a screenshot, and the agent finds the cause, fixes it and runs the tests.

You describe what you want in plain English, Hinglish or however you think. The agent breaks it into steps, writes the code, runs it, reads the errors and keeps going until it works. You review and steer.

2× the usage of Free

Lite doubles your weekly usage window on Dropstone Fast and Dropstone Pro, the same two models Free users already know. That is enough to use Dropstone as your daily coding assistant, not just for the occasional question.

No daily limits

• Unlimited image and file uploads. Free allows 5 of each per day. Paste screenshots of errors, upload PDFs and specs, and attach sheets as often as you need.
• Bigger files: up to 30 MB per file, twice the 15 MB limit on Free.
• Unlimited projects and scratch pads. Free stops at 3.
• Unlimited MCP connectors. Connect GitHub, your database, your docs and anything else that speaks MCP. Free allows 2.
• Unlimited shared session links, so you can send a teammate the exact session that fixed the bug.
• 25 active watchers instead of 1.

More power in the CLI

• Computer use. The CLI agent can drive your desktop to test what it builds. This is not available on Free.
• 2 subagents at once. Lite can split a task and run two agents in parallel, so a refactor and its tests move forward together.

The Heavy model, browser use and memory access stay on Pro and above. If you outgrow Lite, you can upgrade from your dashboard at any time.

Most AI coding tools are one product: an editor, or a chat window, or a terminal agent. Dropstone Lite covers all four, on one account:

• The Dropstone CLI, an agent in your terminal that reads your repo, runs commands, edits files and now, on Lite, uses your computer and runs subagents.
• Chat at dropstone.io, for planning, code review, and working with screenshots, PDFs and files.
• The VS Code extension, for working with the agent inside your editor.
• The Dropstone SDK, for putting the same agent into your own scripts, bots and CI pipelines.

They all share one memory. Tell the agent once in the CLI that your project uses pnpm, or that you prefer functional components, and chat, VS Code and the SDK already know it the next time you open them. You do not copy context between tools, because there is only one copy.

This is the part we think matters most for value. ₹299 is not buying you one tool. It is buying you the same assistant everywhere you write code.

When people search for the best AI coding tools, the same names come up. Here is what each one costs in India in October 2026, using each company's published price, from lowest to highest.

• Dropstone Lite: ₹299 a month. CLI, chat, VS Code and SDK.
• Cursor Start: ₹649 a month. Cursor's new India plan.
• GitHub Copilot Pro: about ₹970 a month. Listed at $10 and billed in US dollars.
• Dropstone Pro: ₹1,499 a month. 8× the usage of Free, plus the Heavy model.
• Claude Pro (includes Claude Code): about ₹2,000 a month.

Looking for a Cursor alternative?

Cursor Start is a good plan, and Cursor deserves credit for pricing in rupees. Lite costs less than half as much, and it is not tied to one editor. If you live in VS Code, in the terminal, or in both, Dropstone works where you already are.

What about Claude Code?

Claude Code is one of the best terminal agents available, and in India it comes with Claude Pro at about ₹2,000 a month. If you want a terminal agent but that price is too high, the Dropstone CLI on Lite gives you an agent with computer use and parallel subagents for about one seventh of the price.

And GitHub Copilot?

Copilot Pro is $10 a month, which is about ₹970 at today's exchange rate before your bank adds forex charges. Lite is ₹299, billed in rupees.

These plans are not identical. Each includes different models and limits, so compare what you actually need. But on price the order is clear: Dropstone Lite is the lowest-priced of the major AI coding agents in India, and the only one that covers your terminal, your editor, your browser and your pipelines on one plan.

• Students learning to code, who want an AI coding assistant that explains as it builds, without paying for a premium plan.
• Freelancers and indie hackers shipping client work and side projects, for whom every subscription has to earn its place.
• Early-career developers who want to vibe code a prototype on the weekend and use the same assistant at work on Monday.
• Anyone on the Free plan who keeps running into the daily upload limit or the weekly usage window.

If you already run long agent sessions all day, or you need the Heavy model, Pro at ₹1,499 is the better fit.

Lite is billed in rupees: ₹299 a month, or ₹3,299 a year, which works out to about one month free.

You can pay today with any credit or debit card, or with Apple Pay on a supported device. UPI is coming soon. We know it is how most of India pays, and we are working on it. We will update this post as soon as it is live.

1. Choose Lite

Go to https://dropstone.io/pricing and choose Lite. If you are on Free, your new limits apply as soon as payment completes. If you are new, sign up and pick Lite at checkout.

2. Install the CLI

One command on macOS, Linux or Windows:

3. Add the VS Code extension

Install Dropstone from the Visual Studio Marketplace: https://marketplace.visualstudio.com/items?itemName=blankline-org.dropstone

4. Bring it into your pipelines

The SDK is on npm as @blankline/dropstone-sdk. It uses the same account and the same memory, so an agent in your CI already knows what you taught it in the terminal.

That is it. One plan, one account, one memory, everywhere you code.

We built Lite so that price is never the reason a developer in India goes without a good coding assistant.

Try it at https://dropstone.io/pricing. Build something, break something, ship something. Then tell us what you made, and what would make Lite better. We read every message.