The five free agent tiers in 2026 are five different machines wearing the same word, and the free tier is where each one says what it is. Meta Muse is the only standing free agent tier with a real compute budget: 100M Muse tokens a week, reset weekly, with paid tiers buying more of the same budget rather than new features. Manus gives 300 credits that refresh daily plus a 1,000-credit one-time starter pool, enough for a handful of tasks a week; when it runs out the clock resets the next day, not the next month. Perplexity Computer's free tier is a research agent; the Computer tier — the one that runs software for you — starts at Pro $20/mo, and the recurring Computer credit allocation only begins at Max $200/mo. Claude Code's free Claude plan is chat, not a coding agent; agent work requires Pro $20/mo. Codex has no standing free agent tier at all — its free entry is a time-boxed promo trial, and the tool itself ships bundled inside ChatGPT Plus ($20) or Pro ($100/$200), not as a standalone subscription. Pick by which free shape matches your workflow — a weekly token pool, a daily credit trickle, a research-only agent, or nothing — not by the brand name. Pricing verified against official pages (2026-09-08 through 2026-10-02).
The only agent here with a genuinely useful standing free tier — 100M Muse tokens a week, enough for daily personal-agent runs. Power $20 and Maximum $100 scale it further.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $20/mo (Power) (Paid tiers are US/Canada only, 18+, and a payment card is required even on the free tier; checkout for agent purchases runs through Link by Stripe with one-time card numbers and purchase protections)
Meta Muse is the consumer personal agent: it plans and executes real work (email, travel, forms, purchases) on Meta's own Muse Spark model, free up to 100M tokens a week, Power $20 and Maximum $100 for more weekly budget.
Free 300 credits a day plus 1,000 one-time credits, enough for short autonomous goals; $20 Starter is the first paid step.
Free tier: Yes · 7 days
Paid from: $20/mo (Starter) (Credits are the single billing unit and do not roll over; complex or re-run tasks consume more, so the real bill depends on task difficulty rather than a fixed per-task price)
Manus is a hosted autonomous agent that plans and runs multi-step work (research, slides, spreadsheets, web apps) in its own sandboxed virtual computer, free with 300 daily-refresh credits and paid plans from $20 a month.
Free tier is a research agent; the Computer tier (the multi-model action agent) starts at Pro $20 with a one-time 4,000 bonus.
Free tier: No — trial only
Paid from: $200/mo (Max, for recurring Computer credits) (Credits meter agent work at 100 credits per $1, and unused monthly credits do not roll over; Max carries a default $200 monthly spend cap (adjustable up to $5,000))
Perplexity Computer is an always-on digital worker that executes multi-step workflows (research, coding, documents, app actions) across 19 frontier models in an isolated cloud sandbox, billed through Perplexity Max at $200 a month.
The free Claude plan is chat, not a coding agent — agent use starts at Pro $17/mo annual. Cheapest capable entry in the class.
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: $17/mo annual (Pro) (Claude Code is reachable three ways: bundled into a Pro or Max subscription, as a team seat, or API-only at per-token rates (Sonnet 5.5: $2 input / $10 output per million tokens; Opus 5.5: $4 / $20), which is cheaper than any flat seat once usage is high.)
Claude Code is the model-native terminal agent: it runs inside Claude Pro at $20 a month, Claude Max from $100, or straight off the API at per-token rates with no seat fee.
No standing free agent tier; the free entry is a time-boxed trial. The usable floor is Plus at $20/mo (bundled, no separate bill).
Free tier: Yes
Paid from: —
OpenAI's always-on coding agent, bundled into ChatGPT with no separate subscription — CLI, IDE, cloud tasks and automatic code review across GPT-5.x model tiers.
Bottom line: If you want the most out of $0, Muse is the clear pick (100M tokens/week), then Manus for autonomous tasks. Perplexity Computer, Claude Code and Codex all require a paid plan to reach their agent capability. All tiers re-verified 2026-09-30.
Meta Muse is the only one with a standing free agent tier — 100M tokens a week. Manus is close with 300 credits/day free plus a one-time 1,000.
Claude Code's free plan is chat-only (agent starts at Pro $17 annual), and Codex's free entry is a time-boxed trial; both sell their agent capability at the $20 floor.