# How Much Do AI Agents Actually Cost? A Pricing FAQ

> Source: The Agents Index — https://theagentsindex.com/blog/ai-agent-pricing-faq-2026 (sourced research, built to be cited)
> By The Agents Index Editorial · Published 2026-07-22

_Intercom Fin, n8n, Clay, Lindy and LangChain each price agents differently — per resolution, per credit, per seat. What each one actually charges._

There is no single "AI agent pricing" model. Five widely-used agents in our index — spanning customer support, workflow automation, sales data, personal assistance and agent frameworks — use five genuinely different pricing shapes: pay-per-outcome, pay-per-workflow-execution, pay-per-action-and-data-credit, a flat subscription with a pooled-usage cap, and a free open-source core with an optional paid layer on top. Below is what each one actually costs today, sourced directly from each vendor's own live pricing page, followed by the pattern across all five and what it means for budgeting.

## Quick answer: what each one costs

| Tool | Category | Pricing model | Starting price | Genuinely free option? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Intercom Fin](/intercom-fin) | Customer support agent | Per resolution (outcome-based) | $0.99/resolution, 50-resolution monthly minimum | No — 14-day trial only |
| [n8n](/n8n) | Workflow automation | Freemium (free self-hosted + paid cloud) | Free self-hosted / €20/month (Cloud Starter) | Yes — Community edition |
| [Clay](/clay) | Sales/GTM data enrichment | Usage-based (actions + data credits) | Free / $167/month (Launch) | Yes — 500 actions/month plan |
| [Lindy](/lindy) | Personal/executive AI assistant | Subscription with pooled usage credits | $49.99/month (Plus) | No — 7-day trial only |
| [LangChain](/langchain) | Agent-building framework | Freemium (free library + paid observability) | Free library / $39/seat/month (LangSmith Plus) | Yes — LangChain/LangGraph core |

## How much does Intercom Fin cost?

Fin is $0.99 per resolution, whether it runs on your existing helpdesk (Zendesk, Salesforce, HubSpot, Freshdesk) or natively inside Intercom. Used with your own helpdesk it carries a 50-resolution monthly minimum; used natively inside Intercom it adds $29 per seat/month for the Intercom plan itself, on top of the per-resolution fee. There's a 14-day free trial with unlimited outcomes and no credit card required, but no permanent free tier. Because billing counts "assumed" resolutions — including cases where a customer simply stops replying — real-world cost can run ahead of what a naive per-resolution estimate suggests; see [our Intercom Fin listing](/intercom-fin) for the resolution-rate caveat in full. Source: [Fin's own pricing page](https://fin.ai/pricing/).

## How much does n8n cost?

n8n's Community edition is free and self-hosted — you run it on your own infrastructure with no subscription. Its managed Cloud starts at €20/month (Cloud Starter, billed annually) for 2,500 workflow executions and 2,300 AI credits/month, scaling to Cloud Pro at €50/month (10,000 executions, up to 13,700 AI credits/month) and Cloud Business at €667/month (40,000 executions, plus SSO/SAML/LDAP and Git version control). Enterprise pricing above that is custom, available either self-hosted or cloud. One licensing note that affects the "free" answer: n8n is fair-code, not OSI-approved open-source, so check the licence terms before reselling a self-hosted deployment commercially. Source: [n8n's pricing page](https://n8n.io/pricing/).

## How much does Clay cost?

Clay's Free plan gives 500 actions/month plus a 1.2K/year data-credit allowance, unlimited seats, and access to its core features (Waterfalls, the Claygent research agent, the Sequencer) — genuinely usable, not a time-limited trial. Paid tiers scale by two separate usage meters, actions and data credits: Launch is $167/month (or $54/month billed annually) for 15,000 actions and 30K data credits/year, and Growth is $446/month (or $185/month billed annually) for 40,000 actions and 72K data credits/year, adding CRM sync and web intent. Enterprise, for 200,000+ actions with SSO/RBAC and warehouse syncs, is custom-priced. Source: [Clay's pricing page](https://www.clay.com/pricing).

## How much does Lindy cost?

Lindy has no permanent free plan — it offers a 7-day free trial with full Plus-tier access and no credit card required, after which paid plans start at $49.99/month (Plus, up to 2 inboxes), rising to $99.99/month (Pro, 3× the usage allowance, up to 3 inboxes, adds browser-use automation) and $199.99/month (Max, 7× usage, up to 5 inboxes). Each tier is a fixed monthly credit pool rather than a metered pay-as-you-go bill: simple tasks cost 1–3 credits, tasks routed to stronger models cost more, and work beyond a plan's monthly allotment bills at 2× the standard credit rate. Enterprise (SSO, SCIM, HIPAA/BAA, audit logs) is custom. Source: [Lindy's pricing page](https://www.lindy.ai/pricing).

## How much does LangChain (and LangSmith) cost?

The LangChain and LangGraph libraries themselves are open-source and free to self-host in Python or JavaScript/TypeScript — there's no charge to build or run agents with the core framework. The paid layer is LangSmith, LangChain's observability and evals product: the Developer tier is free for up to 5,000 traces/month on a single seat, and LangSmith Plus is $39/seat/month for up to 10,000 traces/month with unlimited seats and one free dev deployment, both billing pay-as-you-go beyond those trace limits. Enterprise LangSmith pricing is custom. Source: [LangChain's pricing page](https://www.langchain.com/pricing).

## Why don't AI agents share one pricing model?

Because what's being metered differs by what the agent actually does. Fin bills the thing a support buyer cares about directly — a resolved ticket — so its price scales with outcomes, not effort, which is buyer-friendly in theory but genuinely hard to budget for in practice (see the caveat on how "resolution" gets counted, above). Clay and n8n meter the underlying compute-like unit of their work — actions/data credits and workflow executions respectively — because usage is genuinely variable per customer. Lindy sells a flat, predictable subscription with a usage cap, trading some flexibility for a bill you can forecast exactly. LangChain doesn't charge for the agent-building framework at all; it monetizes a separate, optional layer (observability) once a team is far enough along to want production tracing. None of these are "the standard" — a buyer comparing two agents on price alone is usually comparing two different meters, not two numbers on the same scale.

## Which of these has a genuinely free option — not just a trial?

Three do: n8n's Community edition (self-hosted, no time limit, though fair-code rather than OSI open-source), LangChain and LangGraph's core libraries (fully open-source, no usage cap), and Clay's Free plan (500 actions/month, permanent, not a trial). Two don't: Intercom Fin and Lindy both offer only a time-boxed free trial (14 days and 7 days respectively) with no free tier to fall back to afterward.

## Methodology & sources

Every price above comes from the listing for that tool on this index, each independently verified against the vendor's own live pricing page — see each linked listing for the full sourcing and its exact verification date. This is the same live-source standard applied to every fact in this index; see our [methodology](/methodology/) and [how we research AI agents](/blog/how-we-research-ai-agents/). Prices change — for a look at tools whose pricing *model itself* changed in 2026, see [9 AI agent tools that changed how they charge in 2026](/blog/agent-tool-pricing-shifts-2026/).

To browse pricing for the full index rather than just these five, start with [the AI agent index](/) or [best AI agents](/best-ai-agents).

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Tags: ai-agents, pricing, faq, buyer-guide