Collection

AI Agent Tools With a Free Tier (2026)

We track 55 AI agent tools with a free tier. Our October AI answer check named The Agents Index as a source for 3 of them.

Updated 1 November 2026

Entry plans $20 to $100 a month · 47 with a free plan · prices checked 2 September–1 November 2026

Reviewed by The Agents Index editorial team.

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At a glance
The 55 agents
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See the 55 agents ↓

55 of the 214 tools in our index offer a genuine, ongoing free tier — not a time-limited trial or a one-off credit grant — so you can build or test before paying. Developer tools lead by a wide margin; not one of our 19 support-agent listings has one.

We checked every listing in our index against its own transcribed, dated pricing tiers and found 55 of 214 offer a genuine, ongoing way to use the product at zero cost: not a time-limited trial, not a one-off credit grant, but a tier you can stay on indefinitely. The most common route to $0 here is not a free plan at all: more of these tools are open-source than not, and for those the free tier is the licence. You self-host and pay only your own model provider. The split is not even across categories: coding agents (21 of 32), agent frameworks (15 of 16) and agent platforms (14 of 36) overwhelmingly let you start free, because these are self-serve, developer-led purchases where the vendor wants a working integration in your hands before you ever talk to sales. Junie shows how thin a qualifying tier can be: its AI Free plan carries no expiry, and it stays free-tier-eligible even though its 3 AI Credits per 30 days leave little headroom for actual agentic runs. It is the same "real but thin" free tier this collection already accepts elsewhere. Support agents are the mirror image: not one of the site's 19 support-agent listings has an ongoing free plan, and every one is sold through a pilot, a per-resolution contract, or a time-limited trial that converts to paid. Voice agents stay sparse (3 of 18): most platforms price per minute from the first call, with only trial credits standing in for a free tier. Cartesia, the newest of them, is the clearest exception: a $0/month tier carrying 20,000 model credits and a small prepaid agent balance, which its own pricing copy distinguishes from a trial.

At a glance

agents: 55
Free to start: 47 of 55; free plan or freemium
Public API: 38 of 55; 14 more only on a paid tier
Public pricing: 53 of 55; price on their own site

What this collection covers

We deliberately excluded 5 tools whose pricing page uses free-sounding language that doesn't hold up to that bar. Vapi and Retell AI each disclose, in their own pricing copy, trial-credit-only language (Vapi: 'no permanent free tier'; Retell AI: '$10 in free credits, no commitment'). Both are usage-priced per minute from the first call once credits run out. Bland AI waives a separate platform fee on its entry tier but still bills per minute from call one. Intercom Fin and PolyAI each offer a real trial, 14 days and 2 months respectively, that converts to a paid, sales-led plan, not an ongoing free option. None of the 5 are wrong to consider, since a free trial is still a real way to test a tool, but they answer a different buyer question than 'can I keep using this for free,' so we left them off this list rather than blur the two.

What it takes to be on this list

A tool is on this list only if its published pricing shows an ongoing way to use it at $0: self-hosted and free for good, a permanent free plan, or a cloud tier with a recurring usage allowance and no stated end date. A time-limited trial (however generous), a one-time credit grant, or a waived platform fee that still bills usage from the first action does not count, even where the vendor calls it "free." We check each tool's dated pricing plans, not its marketing headline. Where the free path is an open-source licence rather than a priced plan, we check the licence and the self-host option instead. 5 candidates were checked and left out for this reason (see intro); Vapi, Retell AI and Bland AI now show no free tier on their own listing, matching their own published pricing.