FreeAML review
Pay-per-use verification at $15 per individual and $35 per entity, with a client-pays option that can take a firm's direct cost to zero.
At a glance
- Pricing
- pay-per-use — No subscription. $15 per individual (KYC), $35 per entity (KYB), no signup required. Client-pays option shifts the fee to the customer. Free program generator and ongoing monitoring included with verifications, per vendor. Source: freeaml.com.au, Jul 2026.
- Sectors covered
- Real estate, Legal practitioners, Accountants, Conveyancers, Trust & company service providers
- Best for
- Sole traders and small firms doing a handful of verifications a month who refuse to pay a subscription for capacity they won't use.
- Website
- https://freeaml.com.au
AUSTRAC obligation coverage
| Obligation | Coverage |
|---|---|
| AUSTRAC enrolment | Partial |
| ML/TF risk assessment | Unverified |
| AML/CTF program & policies | Yes |
| Initial customer due diligence | Yes |
| Ongoing CDD & monitoring | Yes |
| Suspicious matter reports | Unverified |
| Threshold transaction reports | Unverified |
| Record keeping | Yes |
| Staff training | Unverified |
| Compliance officer & governance | Partial |
| Independent evaluation | Unverified |
“Unverified” means we haven't yet confirmed this with the vendor or in testing — why we show gaps.
Where it's strong
- Zero fixed cost — genuinely the cheapest route to compliant verification for low volumes
- Client-pays model turns a cost line into a pass-through (or a margin, if you mark it up)
- Free AML/CTF program generator and ongoing monitoring bundled with checks
- No signup or contract friction
Where it falls short
- No staff training module — you'll need to cover the training obligation elsewhere
- Passing a $15–35 fee (or a marked-up one) to clients is a commercial call, not just a compliance one
- Thin public detail on company background versus the subscription incumbents
- Aggressive comparison marketing against competitors; verify claims independently
FreeAML attacks the one thing every other vendor takes for granted: the subscription. There is no monthly fee and no signup — you pay $15 per individual verification and $35 per entity, and if you use the client-pays option, even that cost moves off your books. For a sole trader staring down Tranche 2 with three verifications a month, that maths is hard to ignore.
The honest summary: genuinely the cheapest route to compliant verification at low volumes, with a bundled program generator sweetening the deal — and real gaps (training above all) plus a thinner public track record that mean it's a component for most firms, not the whole answer. All figures from freeaml.com.au, July 2026.
How free is FreeAML?
Precisely: the fixed cost is zero. No subscription, no contract, no signup friction — you pay per check, at $15 for an individual (KYC) and $35 for an entity (KYB). The vendor bundles a free AML/CTF program generator and ongoing monitoring with verifications, which is the part that makes the package more than a checking tool.
Run the numbers against the subscription market: five individual checks a month costs $75 — still less than the cheapest full platform in our database (AMLTranche at $59/month +GST plus whatever your checks cost there) and a fraction of easyAML's $179 entry tier. The crossover comes with volume: a firm doing dozens of checks a month should price the subscriptions seriously, because per-check economics stop being friendly at scale.
The client-pays model, examined
FreeAML's signature move is letting the client pay the verification fee directly — turning your compliance cost line into a pass-through, or even a margin if you mark it up. For conveyancers and agents processing transaction parties, that reframes the whole Tranche 2 cost conversation.
Treat it as a commercial decision, not just a compliance one. A $15–35 fee landing on your client at settlement is a client-experience choice; marking it up is a pricing-transparency choice. Neither is wrong, but decide deliberately and disclose clearly — and check how it sits with your professional body's rules on disbursements. General information, not legal advice.
What it doesn't cover
The big one is staff training — an AML/CTF obligation in its own right, and FreeAML has no training module. You'll need to cover it elsewhere (AML Shield makes training its headline strength). The coverage table above also shows Unverified rows for risk assessment, suspicious matter and threshold reporting, and independent evaluation — not documented publicly, so we won't guess.
Two softer cautions from our research: public detail on the company behind the product is thin compared with the subscription incumbents, and its comparison marketing against competitors is aggressive — verify any competitor claim independently rather than taking either side's word, ours included.
Verdict
For a sole trader or small firm doing a handful of verifications a month, FreeAML is the obvious starting point: zero fixed cost, no lock-in, a program generator included, and a client-pays option that can take the direct cost to nothing. The risk of trying it is close to nil — which is exactly what a cautious small firm should want in year one of Tranche 2.
Score it down for the training gap, the Unverified reporting rows, and the thin public footprint. Most firms will run FreeAML as a component — verification and program — alongside separate answers for training and reporting, and should re-price against subscriptions if volume grows. How we make money — and why it doesn't change verdicts.