# Which AI Agents Are Free to Start? 52 of 94

> Source: The Agents Index — https://theagentsindex.com/blog/free-tier-across-ai-agents-2026 (sourced research)
> By The Agents Index Editorial · Published 2026-08-18 · Updated 2026-08-24

_We rechecked pricing tiers for all 94 AI agents in our index on 25 August 2026. 52 have an ongoing free tier, unchanged as the index grew by one tool._

**Of the 94 AI agents published in The Agents Index on 25 August 2026, 52 offer an ongoing free tier and 42 do not.** We checked every listing's own dated pricing tiers rather than its marketing headline. The count of free-tier tools held at 52 while the corpus grew by one, so the share ticked down again: 58 of 93 in our first count, 52 of 93 in the edition before this one, and now 52 of 94. The one listing that joined since our last check, [VoiceAgent](/voiceagent), a Nigerian-market voice agent, launched with a paid-only $12.50/month starter tier and no ongoing free plan, so it moved the denominator without moving the numerator.

That is the buying question stated plainly. Can you try the tool before you pay for it, or does the meter start on the first call.

## What counts as a free tier here

A free tier is an ongoing plan that costs nothing and stays available. A free trial is not one, and neither is a one-time signup credit.

The distinction still does real work. Intercom's Fin AI Agent has no ongoing free plan, only a trial that converts to a seat-priced contract starting at $29 per seat per month plus $0.99 per resolved outcome, so it counts as a No, confirmed on [Intercom's own pricing page](https://www.intercom.com/pricing). Vapi and Retell AI each disclose trial-credit-only language in their own pricing copy (Vapi: "no permanent free tier", Retell AI: "$10 in free credits, no commitment"), and both bill per minute once the credits run out. Both stay in the No column for the same reason.

## The split is absolute at both ends

Two categories in the index have no exceptions in either direction. All 14 agent frameworks offer a free tier. None of the 9 support agents do.

| Category | Listings | Free tier | No free tier |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding agents | 25 | 18 | 7 |
| Agent platforms | 16 | 7 | 9 |
| Frameworks | 14 | 14 | 0 |
| Voice agents | 12 | 3 | 9 |
| Research agents | 11 | 7 | 4 |
| Support agents | 9 | 0 | 9 |
| Sales and marketing agents | 8 | 3 | 5 |
| Agent tools | 2 | 1 | 1 |

The column sums to 97 rather than 94 because three listings sit in two categories each. Botsify and Sierra are both a support agent and an agent platform, and ElevenLabs Conversational AI is both a voice agent and an agent platform. Only ElevenLabs carries a free tier, which is why the Free column sums to 53 while the corpus total for free tools is 52.

## Every framework is free, and 13 of the 14 are open source

All 14 frameworks in the index offer a free tier, unchanged since our last count. Thirteen of the 14 are open source, which makes the free tier close to automatic: you can run the code yourself, so there is nothing to charge for at the entry point.

The fourteenth is the interesting one. Claude Agent SDK is proprietary and still free to start, so the framework result is not purely an artefact of open licensing, though 13 of the 14 cases are.

## No support agent is free, and voice agents pick up a new paid-only listing

None of the 9 support agents in the index offers a free tier, the same result as our last count. All 9 are cloud-only and priced by seat, by resolution or by custom contract. A support agent charges when it closes a ticket, so a free tier would mean giving away the unit the vendor sells.

Voice agents move for the first time in three editions, but not because an existing listing changed its pricing. [VoiceAgent](/voiceagent) is the category's newest entry, and it launched with a paid-only starter plan rather than a free one, so the category reads 3 of 12 free this time against 3 of 11 last time. [Cartesia](/cartesia) is still the clearest existing example of a genuine free tier here, a real $0-per-month plan with 20,000 model credits that its own pricing copy distinguishes from a trial.

## The pricing label on a listing is not the same claim as a free tier

Every listing in the index also carries a coarser pricing-model tag: free, freemium or paid. That tag and the free-tier answer disagree more often than expected.

**Of the 44 tools tagged "paid" as their primary pricing model, 10 turn out to have a genuine, ongoing $0 tier once you read their actual pricing rows rather than the label.** Augment Code, Junie, CodeRabbit and Clay each publish a $0 plan alongside their paid ones, and so do Julius AI, Manus, LangGraph, AgentsKit, OpenClaw and Relevance AI. A pricing-model tag built around a listing's dominant plan calls these "paid" correctly, but it answers a different question than can you start for nothing. VoiceAgent is also tagged paid, and unlike those 10 it has no $0 tier hiding behind the label; its own pricing page starts at $12.50/month with no free plan listed.

The reverse mismatch is smaller but real. Of the 50 tools tagged "free" or "freemium," 8 do not clear the bar this census applies: Goose, Kilo Code, Devin, Claude Code, TinyFish, Vellum, Sim and MindStudio each carry a free-sounding tag despite no ongoing $0 tier in their own published pricing rows. A reader who filters this directory by "free" and stops at the tag will miss real free tools tagged paid, and land on some that are not free at all.

## What this census does not say

It describes our index, not the market. The Agents Index holds 94 published AI agent tools chosen by our own inclusion criteria, so read every number above as a fact about this corpus on 25 August 2026.

Pricing moves without notice, and free tiers are the part of a pricing page that moves the most. You can browse the current set at [AI agent tools with a free tier](/collections/ai-agent-tools-with-a-free-tier), which lists every qualifying tool by name and states our exclusions.

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Tags: ai-agents, pricing, free-tier, open-source, market-analysis, data-report