Free AI Agents: What You Get Without Paying

Free AI agents come in two kinds. Some products have a free plan with limits: Antigravity at $0, GitHub Copilot Free, Kiro Free with 50 credits, Cursor Free and Devin Free. Others are free software, such as OpenCode, Cline, Goose and Aider, where the tool costs nothing and you pay only the model, or nothing with a local one. Checked 31 October 2026.

The free options side by side

Not on the list: Claude Code, which needs a paid plan, and Gemini CLI, which no longer has a free individual tier.

Free plans: what the limits really are

A free plan is a trial with a ceiling. The ceiling is often invisible until you hit it, so read what each vendor actually states.

Antigravity

Google's pricing page gives individuals a $0 plan. Our Antigravity page lists the free model line-up: Gemini 3.8 Flash on all plans, plus older Claude 4.6 and GPT-OSS 120B partner models on Free until they are removed on 2 November 2026. The selector shows separate weekly and five-hour limits for Gemini models and for partner models. No numbers are published. This is the most capable free plan we found for a full IDE plus CLI. The privacy terms for free individual accounts were not clear in the sources we read; treat it as a hosted service and keep confidential code out.

GitHub Copilot Free

Copilot's plans page lists Free at $0 with limited chat and agent usage. Agent mode, MCP integration and custom instructions are on every plan, Free included. Free is capped at 2,000 inline suggestions a month and entry-level models, and, unlike paid plans, cannot buy extra credits. It is the easiest way to try an agent inside VS Code or a JetBrains IDE you already use.

Kiro Free

Kiro's Free plan is $0 and includes 50 credits, with access to open weight models and Claude Sonnet 4.5. Pro starts at $20 for 1,000 credits. Fifty credits will cover a few specs and some experiments. It is a way to see the requirements-first workflow, not a working budget.

Cursor Free

The Free tier gives limited agent and Chat use. Third-party models are not available on the lower tiers; they start at Premium ($30). Plus is $8. If your interest is Cursor itself, Free tells you whether the editor suits you, nothing more. See Cursor alternatives.

Devin Free

Devin's Free plan gives a light quota for coding with agents, limited models, and unlimited Tab completions and inline edits. It also covers the Devin CLI and the web app with limited usage. Pro is $20. Cognition's security page says it may use your data for model training by default, with an opt-out on paid plans, so the free tier carries a data trade you should know about.

Free software: the tool is free, the model is not

With open source agents the question changes from "what does the free plan include" to "who pays the model bill". You have four routes.

OpenCode

MIT-licensed and free. The site lists a rotating set of free models on its Zen service. They are "available for a limited time", so the list changes. Our OpenCode page notes that some free models may use collected data to improve the model during the free period, that NVIDIA-hosted Nemotron free models are for trial use and should not get confidential data, and that a couple of free models retain data for 30 days. You can switch free models off with OPENCODE_DISABLE_FREE_MODELS=1.

Cline

Cline's pricing page calls it "completely free for individual developers", with inference billed on usage. There is also a $9.99 a month ClinePass for open-weight models, which is not free but is cheap. Bring a key or run a local model.

Goose

An Apache-2.0 desktop app, CLI and API from the Linux Foundation's Agentic AI Foundation. It works with 15+ providers and can use existing Claude, ChatGPT or Gemini subscriptions through ACP. Local models work through Ollama.

Aider

Apache-2.0, terminal only, works with almost any model. Check the project's slower release pace before relying on it.

OpenHands

MIT-licensed and self-hosted. Free if you can run it, but you are the operator. The README warns that running without a sandbox gives the agent full access to your filesystem.

Can a local model be good enough?

A local model gives you a free agent with no data leaving your machine. The honest tradeoff is quality and speed. Small models on a laptop make more mistakes with multi-file edits than frontier models in the cloud, and agent loops multiply the cost of a slow model because they call it many times.

What helps:

• Choose a code-tuned model your hardware can run comfortably. See best open source LLM for coding.
• Keep tasks small and specific.
• Use a larger model for planning and a small one for edits where the tool supports two models; Aider's architect mode is built for this.
• Check GPU requirements for LLMs before buying anything.

The setup guide is local coding agent with Ollama. For a wider view of private options, see self-hosted AI coding assistant.

Stretching a free plan

Limits are measured in model work, so waste is what drains them. A few habits make a free tier last.

1. Be specific. A vague request makes the agent explore. "Add a unit test for parseDate in src/utils/date.ts" costs far less than "improve test coverage".
2. Start fresh sessions. Long conversations carry their history into every call. When the task changes, begin a new session.
3. Point at files. Name the files involved so the agent does not search the whole project.
4. Plan cheaply. Use a chat or ask mode to agree on an approach, then let the agent edit once.
5. Pick the smaller model for routine work. Devin's pricing FAQ itself suggests small models such as Haiku, GPT 5.2 Mini and Kimi K2.5 for routine tasks to stretch usage.
6. Turn off what you do not use. Extra MCP servers load tool descriptions into every request. Add only the ones you need. Our MCP server list helps you choose a few.
7. Keep an instruction file. A short AGENTS.md with build and test commands saves the agent from guessing. See write a good AGENTS.md.

Combining free tools

Nothing stops you using more than one. A common pattern is to keep Copilot Free for inline suggestions in your editor, use a free-software terminal agent for bigger edits with a cheap or local model, and keep Antigravity's free plan for a second opinion. Because most of these read AGENTS.md and speak MCP, the shared setup is small. The risk is sprawl: three tools mean three places where your code is sent. Decide which tools may see which repositories, and write that down for anyone else on the project. A one-line rule such as "free hosted tiers only for open source repositories" is easy to follow and easy to audit. Review the rule whenever a vendor changes its terms, which free tiers do often.

What free does not cover

• Reliable quality. Free tiers use lighter models.
• Privacy guarantees. Free tiers often have weaker data terms. Devin's page and OpenCode's free models both show it.
• Predictability. Limits are weekly and unpublished. A job that works on Monday may stall on Friday.
• Support. Free users rarely get any.
• Long-term stability. Free offerings change. Gemini CLI's free tier ended for individuals in June 2026, and OpenCode's free models rotate.

When to start paying

Move to a paid plan when one of these happens:

1. You hit the limit before you finish a normal work day, twice in a week.
2. You need a model the free plan excludes.
3. You need data terms for company code.
4. You need the tool for a team.

At that point compare cost units, not headline prices. Our AI coding agent pricing compared lines up credits, usage windows and tokens.

Picking one

For the full landscape, see AI coding agents and open source AI agents.

What we would do first

If you have never used an agent, spend a week like this. Day one, install Antigravity or turn on Copilot Free and ask for one small change. Day two, try the same change in OpenCode or Cline with a few dollars of API credit. Day three, compare the diffs. Day four, try a local model on a task you can check by running tests. Days five to seven, use whichever you liked on real work and note every time a limit interrupts you. At the end you will know which kind of free you can live with, and which limit is worth paying to remove.

Finally, keep a one-page log during your trial: tool, task, result, what limit you hit. After a week the log makes the choice for you, and it is the best evidence to show a manager if you later ask for a paid seat.

Our take

This is an editorial reading of vendor pages and repositories, not a hands-on test.

"Free" is three different things, and it helps to say which you mean. A free plan is a sample of someone's paid product, with limits designed to nudge you up. Free software is a gift with a bill attached, because the model still costs money. A local model is free in the strict sense but pays you back in effort and speed.

For most people trying agents for the first time, the best sequence is cheap and quick. Use Copilot Free or Antigravity for a few days to learn what an agent does. Then try OpenCode or Cline with a few dollars of API credit, to see what model choice changes. Keep sensitive code out of free hosted tiers until you have read their data terms. And re-check limits when you start, because the free tier you read about last month may have changed.

Checklist

• Decide what you need: a trial, a tool, or privacy
• Pick one free plan and one open source tool to compare
• Set a spend cap with any API provider you connect
• Keep confidential code out of free hosted tiers
• Note when you hit a limit and what the message said
• Re-check free limits on the vendor page when you start