Directory · verified 2 Sep 2026
Free AI coding agents
None of these charge for the tool itself. They expect you to bring a key, which is what the rest of this site is for — pair any of them with a free provider and the whole setup costs nothing.
They differ in where they live: in the terminal, inside VS Code, or as autocomplete in whatever editor you already use. Kilo Code is the outlier, shipping free models of its own.
OpenCodeCoding agent in your terminal. Point it at any free API on this list.agent
ClineAutonomous agent inside VS Code. Bring your own free API key.agent
Kilo CodeA Cline fork that ships with free models included.agent
ContinueAutocomplete and chat in your editor, pointed at your local or free model.agent
AiderPair programming in the terminal, with automatic git commits.agentQuestions about these
Which free model is good enough to code with?
Nemotron 3 Ultra and Laguna on NVIDIA NIM, plus Groq’s GPT-OSS 120B, are the strongest free options for agentic work. Qwen Coder is the best small model if you are running locally.
Will a free tier survive an agent?
Agents are token-hungry — a single task can run dozens of calls. Google’s 1,500-a-day Gemini tier or NIM’s 40-a-minute cap hold up; a 5-requests-a-minute trial will not. Check the rate limit, not just the daily total.