- Free allowance
- Free and open source under the Apache License 2.0; the agent works with any model behind the user's own key, and its docs name free API providers: 'OpenRouter offers free access to many models, with limitations on daily usage'
- Verdict
- self-hosted, last resortverdict qualifies-with-caveat: usable, with a named limit or an unprobed read path. Self-hosted options are listed last, because this site is for users who have no hardware.
- Cost
- not stated
- Identity
- anonymousno card, no phone
- Binding limit
- noneno named constraint binds
- Evidence
- documented9 sources; a first-party page was read and the sentence quoted
- Freshness
- stale on 2026-12-05checked 2026-11-04 (live); stale on 2026-12-05
| Free tier | free and open source under the Apache License 2.0; the agent works with any model behind the user's own key, and its docs name free API providers: 'OpenRouter offers free access to many models, with limitations on daily usage' unit none; metered on none; the agent costs nothing and imposes no quota; the endpoint it calls is the bill and the binding limit |
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| Price | none stated |
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| Binding | none the agent has no quota of its own; the endpoint's quota decides capacity |
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| Identity | anonymous no account is needed to run the agent, which installs from PyPI with 'python -m pip install aider-install'; each endpoint it calls carries its own identity cost |
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| Egress | not applicable: the chosen endpoint serves the inference |
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| Per-object cap | not applicable: a coding agent meters nothing itself |
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| Interface | cli a terminal program. Headless: aider --message (-m) or --message-file runs one instruction, applies the edits and exits; --yes answers every confirmation; a Python API (Coder.create) exists but is documented as unsupported |
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| Tooling | the user installs and runs the aider CLI (pip aider-install, uv, pipx or the install script) on a rented or free machine, and points it at an endpoint with --model and --api-key; OpenAI-compatible endpoints, OpenRouter and GitHub Copilot's api.githubcopilot.com are documented |
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| Composes with | pairs with any endpoint in inference/ and with a GitHub Copilot subscription, whose calls through aider are billed to that subscription; the agent is free and the tokens are not |
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| Reliability | the latest PyPI release is 0.86.2, uploaded 2026-02-12; the release notes list further unreleased changes on the main branch |
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| Notes | Not a subscription: a free agent with no vendor-served inference. It answers the question only as the USD 0 harness for a free or cheap endpoint chosen from inference/. |
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| Evidence note | documented licence, install path, headless flags and the free-provider guidance are quoted from the project's own pages read on 2026-10-30. Capacity belongs to the endpoint chosen, so nothing about quota can be measured on the agent. |
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