First-party data · Updated July 20, 2026
AI agent statistics 2026
As of July 20, 2026, the median entry price across 46 verified AI agents is $20/month; 63% offer a free tier, 11% are open source, and 24% sell only via custom enterprise contracts. Unlike third-party stat roundups, every number on this page is computed from our own monthly-verified index.
$20
median entry price / month
63%
offer a free tier
11%
open source
24%
custom pricing only
Key AI agent statistics (2026)
Every statistic below is computed from the index itself and recomputes when the underlying data changes. Each is written to stand alone, cite individually with attribution to bestaiagents.app/stats.
- 01The index tracks 46 verified AI agents across 7 categories, re-verified monthly against official pricing pages.
- 02The median published entry price for an AI agent is $20/month (computed across the 31 agents with public monthly pricing).
- 03Published entry prices span $7.99/month (Hostinger Horizons) to $2000/month, but custom enterprise contracts reach far higher.
- 0463% of AI agents (29 of 46) offer a free tier or free self-hosted option.
- 0511% of AI agents (5 of 46) are open source; 5 of those 5 are developer-facing (coding, research, or browser automation).
- 0624% of agents sell only via custom enterprise contracts with no public pricing.
- 0773% of sales and customer-support agents are custom-priced, versus 9% of coding agents.
- 0841% of agents now use usage-based pricing (per resolution, credit, or compute unit) instead of flat subscriptions.
- 0971% of publicly-priced agents cost $25/month or less to start, the individual-developer price band.
- 10Coding agents have the lowest median entry price ($20/month) of any category; AI sales agents (AI SDRs) are the most expensive, typically $750 to $5,000+/month.
- 117 verified pricing or packaging changes have been logged since tracking began (40 days of observation).
- 12The index includes 5 maintained head-to-head agent comparisons with shared evaluation criteria.
Pricing by category
Median published entry prices differ by an order of magnitude between categories: developer-facing agents cluster near $20/month while sales and support platforms skew toward custom enterprise contracts.
| Category | Agents | Median entry price | Free tier | Open source | Custom-priced |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 11 | $20/mo | 9 of 11 | 1 of 11 | 1 of 11 |
| Sales | 6 | $575/mo | 2 of 6 | 0 of 6 | 4 of 6 |
| Customer Support | 5 | n/a | 0 of 5 | 0 of 5 | 4 of 5 |
| Research | 5 | $20/mo | 5 of 5 | 1 of 5 | 2 of 5 |
| General & Browser | 7 | $27.494999999999997/mo | 5 of 7 | 3 of 7 | 0 of 7 |
| Trading | 5 | $52/mo | 2 of 5 | 0 of 5 | 0 of 5 |
| Website Builders | 7 | $15.5/mo | 6 of 7 | 0 of 7 | 0 of 7 |
What the categories reveal
The pricing divide tracks who pays, not what the technology does. Coding agents are priced for individual developers, median $20/month, 82% with free tiers, because adoption is bottom-up: a developer tries it on a side project and expenses it later. The category is also where open source is strongest, with credible self-hosted alternatives constraining what vendors can charge.
Sales and customer-support agents invert this: 73% are custom-priced, free tiers are nearly absent, and entry points run $750+/month. These products are sold top-down against a payroll line, an AI SDR is priced against the ~$6,000/month all-in cost of a human SDR, not against software budgets. Usage-based models (like per-resolution support pricing) are growing here because they price directly against the human task they replace.
Research and general-purpose agents sit between: consumer-style subscriptions in the $12–$40/month band, with free tiers used as acquisition. This is the newest segment, and its pricing has been the most volatile in our tracking, worth watching the change log below as the category matures.
Flat subscription prices cover light use; heavy autonomous workloads add token or credit charges on top, which is why agentic AI shows such high token consumption and unpredictable bills.
How AI agents charge
Of 46 indexed agents: 11 charge flat subscriptions, 19 use usage-based pricing (per resolution, credit, or compute unit), 11 sell custom enterprise contracts, and 5 are free or open source with bring-your-own-API-key costs.
Observed pricing changes
Changes we have verified against vendors' official pricing pages during monthly re-verification, newest first. This log grows as the index is re-verified; cite it as “BestAIAgents.app pricing-change log.”
- July 20, 2026Elicit
Entry paid plan is now Pro at $49/mo ($588/yr); the previous $12/mo Plus tier no longer appears on the official pricing page, leaving Basic (free), Pro $49/mo, Scale $169/mo and Enterprise
Verified July 20, 2026
- June 15, 2026Browser Use
Managed cloud now sold as subscription tiers from $29/mo (Dev) through Business $299/mo and Scaleup $999/mo, alongside the free self-hosted open-source framework
Verified June 15, 2026
- June 15, 2026AiSDR
Entry plan now Explore at $900/mo billed quarterly (was ~$750/mo monthly); Grow tier $2,500/mo, with a 20% annual discount
Verified June 15, 2026
- June 15, 2026Ava by Artisan
Moved from custom-only annual contracts (~$1,000+/mo) to self-serve credit plans: free tier (300 credits/mo), Intern $250/mo and Employee $600/mo billed annually, plus Enterprise
Verified June 15, 2026
- June 1, 2026GitHub Copilot
Moved from flat per-seat pricing to usage-based billing with monthly AI Credits plus pay-per-token overage
Verified June 10, 2026
- April 2, 2026Codex
Codex usage moved from per-message pricing to token-based credits across Plus, Pro and Business plans; entry access now $8/mo ChatGPT Go (was $20/mo Plus) with limited usage on the free tier
Verified July 20, 2026
- February 1, 2026
About this dataset
The index currently tracks 46 AI agents across 7 categories, with 5 head-to-head comparisons. Every listing is re-verified monthly against official sources; the most recent verification pass completed July 20, 2026. Numbers on this page are recomputed automatically whenever the underlying index changes; they are never manually edited. See the methodology for verification details. When citing, please reference bestaiagents.app/stats and the update date.
Frequently asked questions
How much does an AI agent cost in 2026?
Across the 46 verified agents in this index, published entry prices range from $7.99 to $2000 per month, with a median of $20/month among agents with public monthly pricing. 24% of agents (mostly enterprise sales and support platforms) use custom contracts with no public pricing.
What percentage of AI agents offer a free tier?
63% of the AI agents in this index (29 of 46) offer a free tier or free self-hosted option, as of July 20, 2026.
How many AI agents are open source?
11% of indexed AI agents (5 of 46) are open source, concentrated in coding, research, and browser automation categories.
What is the cheapest AI agent?
Hostinger Horizons has the lowest published entry price at $7.99/month. Truly free options exist via open source: OpenHands, GPT Researcher, Browser Use, Hermes Agent, OpenClaw can be self-hosted at no license cost, paying only model API usage.
How do AI sales agent prices compare to coding agents?
Coding agents have a median entry price of $20/month, while most AI sales agents (AI SDRs) are custom-priced platforms typically running $750–$5,000/month, a roughly 40–250x difference, reflecting that AI SDRs replace payroll while coding agents augment an individual developer.
How often do AI agents change their pricing?
In 40 days of verified tracking across 46 agents, we have logged 7 material pricing or packaging changes, including shifts from flat subscriptions to usage-based billing. The pricing-change log on this page is updated with every monthly verification pass.
Which AI agent category has the most free tiers?
Research: 5 of 5 research agents (100%) offer a free tier, compared with 63% across the full index. Enterprise sales and support agents rarely offer free tiers because deployments require onboarding.
Where does this data come from?
Every number on this page is computed directly from the BestAIAgents.app index, a hand-curated catalog in which each listing's pricing is re-verified against the vendor's official pricing page on a monthly cycle, with verification dates published per listing. It is first-party data, not an aggregation of third-party reports.