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There is increasing evidence from string theory that effective field theoriesare only reliable over approximately sub-Planckian field excursions. The twomost promising effective models for early universe cosmology, inflation andekpyrosis, are mechanisms that, in order to address cosmological puzzles, mustoperate over vast expansion/energy ranges. This suggests that it might beappropriate to describe them using scaling laws. Here we combine these twoideas and demonstrate that they drive inflation and ekpyrosis to theirextremes: inflation must start at ultra-slow-roll, and ekpyrosis atultra-fast-roll. At face value, the implied spectra are overly tilted to thered, although in both cases minor departures from pure scale freedom bring thespectral indices within current observational bounds. These models predict asignificant spectral running at a level detectable in the near future($\alpha_s \approx -10^{-3}$). Ekpyrotic models with minimal coupling arenevertheless ruled out, as they lead to levels of non-Gaussianity that are atleast an order of magnitude too large. No such restrictions apply to modelswith a kinetic coupling between the two ekpyrotic scalar fields, and theseremain the most promising ekpyrotic models.  An additional swampland criterion that was recently proposed for the slope ofthe scalar field potential would however rule out all ultra-slow-roll models ofinflation. Finally, we speculate on the existence of corresponding restrictionson the slope at negative potential values, which might lead to similarly severeconstraints on ekpyrotic models.

Small-Field and Scale-Free: Inflation and Ekpyrosis at their Extremes