Is there an expiration date for a free Jira instance?

[melanie test]

My group created a Jira instance some time ago (unfortunately can't track exactly when) and some projects inside it. I was able to use it up to a week ago, now the instance disappeared and I wanted to know if that is the normal behavior, so to recreate anither one for testing purposes.

[Arkadiusz Wroblewski]

Hello @melanie test 

Free Jira Cloud doesn’t have a fixed expiration date, but it can be deactivated if nobody uses it for a long time.

What likely happened to you:

If your site was mainly used for testing and then sat idle, Atlassian can deactivate Free-only sites after a long inactivity period (commonly cited as around 120 days with no activity). When that happens, it can look like the instance “disappeared”.

“Inactivity” can be as simple as:

nobody logs in

nobody opens an issue / dashboard / project page

What to do now:

Try going directly to your old site URL (the something.atlassian.net address).

If it’s deactivated, you’ll usually get a message about that (instead of seeing your projects).

Ask whoever is the Org/Site admin to check the admin area for inactive products and any emails about deactivation.

If it was deactivated recently, it may still be reactivable. If it’s been a long time, the data may be gone.

For a new test instance:

If you recreate one, the simple rule is: log in occasionally (once a month is plenty). Just opening a dashboard or issue is enough to keep it “active”.