How can I run AI agents for free?
Free options that work
Hosted model providers often offer a small free allowance or trial credit for new accounts. These allowances change over time, so check each provider's pricing page before you build around one. Free tiers are useful for learning and testing, but a busy agent can use them up quickly.
Open-source models can run on your own machine through tools such as Ollama or LM Studio. Local models have no per-request cost, but their answers are usually weaker than the largest hosted models. They also need enough memory and a capable processor to respond at a reasonable speed.
- Hosted free tiers: good for prototypes and learning
- Local open-source models: no per-request cost
- Free cloud hosting tiers: good for small scheduled agents
- Your own spare computer: often the cheapest long-term option
Keep the bill near zero
Set a step limit so your agent cannot loop forever and drain your allowance. Cache results you already fetched, and avoid sending the same long documents to the model again and again. Log token counts for each run so you can see which tasks cost the most.
Use a small model for simple steps like sorting or formatting, and save the larger model for hard reasoning. This split often lowers costs without hurting the final result much.
Common mistakes
- Letting an agent run without a step limit, which can use up your allowance fast.
- Assuming a free tier will stay free forever, since plans and limits change.
