Which AI Agents Are Free to Start? 60 of 94

Of the 94 AI agents classified in The Agents Index on 27 August 2026, 60 offer an ongoing free tier and 34 do not. We checked every listing’s own dated pricing tiers rather than its marketing headline. Both figures are read at a single collector run, 221173, so every count on this page can be re-derived rather than re-counted.

Correction, 11 September 2026. This report was published as “Which AI Agents Are Free to Start? 52 of 94” and read “52 offer an ongoing free tier and 42 do not”, above a history line running “58 of 93 in our first count, 52 of 93 in the edition before this one, and 52 of 94 since VoiceAgent joined paid-only”. Those three points were not measured the same way, so the series is withdrawn rather than corrected in place. The free-tier answer recorded on each counted listing, which is what this census is about, gives 58 of the 93 then classified at our first count on 19 August 2026, and 60 of 94 on 27 August 2026; the only days it returns 52 at all are 16 and 17 August, against the smaller populations of 86 and 87 listings we held then. The 52 in the withdrawn headline came from a narrower reading, our free-tier tag counted only where the coarser pricing-model field also said free or freemium, and that double filter does return 52 on 27 August. “52 of 93” is the point neither reading produces on the day we printed it: it was our headline on 24 August 2026, when the free-tier answer gave 60 of the 93 then classified and the double filter gave 51. The double filter does reach 52 of 93, but not until 1 September, a week after we had stopped printing it. This edition states one reading and names it: collector run 221173, whose day is 27 August 2026, at which the index held 95 published listings, 94 of them carrying a free-tier answer, and 60 of those 94 free to start. The two paragraphs that compared the pricing-model tag against the free-tier answer are rewritten below for the same reason, because they described a two-way mismatch this reading does not contain. If you cited the earlier 52-of-94 figure, this is the correction.

What this counts, and what it leaves out. On 27 August 2026 this index held 95 published listings. 94 of them carry a free-tier answer, and every count on this page is out of those 94. 60 of the 94 classified listings offer an ongoing free tier. 34 of the 94 classified listings have no ongoing free tier. The one exclusion is Agentix Labs, the single listing in our agencies category: it sells services rather than a product with a published price list, so it carries no pricing-tiers table and no free-tier answer, and it is left out rather than counted as a No.

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. 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. 14 of the 14 agent frameworks in the index offer a free tier. 0 of the 9 support agents in the index offer a free tier.

Category	Listings	Free tier	No free tier
Coding agents	25	21	4
Agent platforms	16	10	6
Frameworks	14	14	0
Voice agents	12	3	9
Research agents	11	9	2
Support agents	9	0	9
Sales and marketing agents	8	3	5
Agent tools	2	1	1

The Listings 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. ElevenLabs carries a free tier and the other two do not, which is why the Free tier column sums to 61 against a corpus total of 60 free tools, and the No free tier column sums to 36 against a corpus total of 34.

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

All 14 frameworks in the index offer a free tier. 13 of the 14 agent frameworks in the index are open source. That 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 only 3 of 12 voice agents are

None of the 9 support agents in the index offers a free tier. 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 are the next hardest category to start for nothing, at 3 of 12. VoiceAgent is one of the nine without one; its own pricing page starts at $12.50/month with no free plan listed. Cartesia is the clearest example of the other kind here, a real $0-per-month plan with 20,000 model credits that its own pricing copy distinguishes from a trial.

Where a free tier runs, and who hosts it

A free tier means one of two things on this index, and the split is not even. 47 of the 60 tools with a free tier can be used at no cost in the vendor’s own cloud. Those you can try by signing up, without running anything yourself. 13 of the 60 tools with a free tier are free only if you host them yourself. For those the software is free and the server is your problem, which is a different kind of free to a reader with a budget and no infrastructure. The two groups account for all 60.

Licence is the other thing a reader weighs here, and this census records it separately. 33 of the 60 tools with a free tier are open source and 26 are proprietary. One of the 60, Lead Scorer, carries no licence answer on its record at all, which is why those two figures sum to 59 rather than 60.

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, subscription or usage-based. 38 tools in the index are billed by usage or subscription. That tag and the free-tier answer disagree in one direction only, and rarely.

4 of the 38 tools billed by usage or subscription offer a free tier. Their actual pricing rows carry a genuine, ongoing $0 tier that the label hides. ElevenLabs Conversational AI, Manus, TinyFish and Webhound each publish a metered plan for heavier use alongside a $0 tier that lets you start for nothing. A pricing-model tag built around a listing’s dominant plan calls these “usage-based” or “subscription” correctly, but it answers a different question than can you start for nothing.

The reverse mismatch does not exist at this reading. Every listing tagged free or freemium also carries a genuine free tier, all 56 of them, so a reader who filters this directory by “free” and stops at the tag will not be misled in that direction.

Method

Each of the 94 counted listings in this index carries a free-tier answer on its own record, a yes or a no set from the vendor’s own published pricing tiers, and that field is what this census counts. It records an ongoing plan that costs nothing and stays available, and it is set to No where the only free path is a time-limited trial or a one-time signup credit. That is why Fin, Vapi and Retell AI are all a No above despite each giving you something for nothing at the start.

The count is read at one immutable collector run rather than against the live index, and the run is part of the claim: run 221173, whose day is 27 August 2026. At that run the index held 95 published listings, 94 carried a free-tier answer, and 60 of those 94 said yes. To re-derive any figure above, take the population from the published listings of run 221173, the free-tier answer from the newest listing record at or before run 221173, the category rows from the taxonomy of the same run, and the hosting and licence figures from the deployment and open-source answers on those same records. A day earlier the index held 94 published listings and 93 answers, which is why the date alone is not enough to pin a count.

One narrower reading exists and is not the one this page uses. Counting only the listings that carry our free-tier tag and are also tagged free or freemium on the pricing-model field gives 52 at this same run, which is the figure the withdrawn edition printed. That double filter asks whether a listing’s headline pricing is free. This census asks whether you can start for nothing, so it reads the free-tier answer itself.

What this census does not say

It describes our index, not the market. The Agents Index held 95 published AI agent listings on 27 August 2026, chosen by our own inclusion criteria, and 94 of them carry a free-tier answer, so read every number above as a fact about this corpus on that day.

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, which lists every qualifying tool by name and states our exclusions.