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An original analysis of 53+ AI agent vendors across 19 categories: how the market actually prices, where the free tiers cluster, who supports VPC and on-prem deployment, and how new the category really is.
Hide pricing behind “Contact sales”
Median per-seat price per month
Offer a free tier
Are three years old or younger
Key findings
Pricing models
How vendors charge for AI agents in 2026. Note that “custom” dominates — most enterprise vendors require a sales conversation to learn the price.
| Pricing model | Vendors | Share | Best fit |
|---|---|---|---|
| custom | 22 | 41.5% | Enterprise sales-led contracts |
| per seat | 13 | 24.5% | Knowledge work, productivity tools |
| tiered | 8 | 15.1% | SMB to mid-market self-serve |
| per minute | 3 | 5.7% | Voice agents |
| per resolution | 2 | 3.8% | Customer support, automation outcomes |
| usage based | 2 | 3.8% | High-volume back-office automation |
| freemium | 2 | 3.8% | Adoption-driven categories (design, creator tools) |
| free | 1 | 1.9% | Open-source / freemium |
Free tiers
17% of all vendors offer a free tier overall, but the distribution is highly uneven. Categories where free tiers cluster indicate higher buyer leverage and competitive pricing pressure.
| Category | Vendors | With free tier | % with free |
|---|---|---|---|
| support | 8 | 1 | 13% |
| sales | 7 | 1 | 14% |
| coding | 6 | 4 | 67% |
| voice | 4 | 0 | 0% |
| healthcare | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| compliance | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| marketing | 3 | 0 | 0% |
| legal | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| hr | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| finance | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| insurance | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| customer success | 2 | 0 | 0% |
| video | 2 | 1 | 50% |
| design | 2 | 2 | 100% |
| ecommerce | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| content moderation | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| procurement | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| data | 1 | 0 | 0% |
| cybersecurity | 1 | 0 | 0% |
Deployment options
Only a minority of vendors publicly support VPC or on-premise deployment — a hard constraint for regulated industries.
100% of vendors
15% of vendors
6% of vendors
0% of vendors
Methodology
Sample: 53 AI agent vendors hand-curated across 19 categories — customer support, sales, voice, coding, healthcare, finance, compliance, legal, HR, content moderation, marketing, design, video, data, procurement, and cybersecurity. Vendors selected by category coverage, not by funding or press attention.
Data sources: public pricing pages, terms of service, G2 + Capterra listings, company funding announcements (Crunchbase), and vendor sales outreach. Where pricing is custom, we recorded "custom" rather than guessing — this is why 42% of the dataset shows as custom-priced.
Limitations: this is a market-structure analysis, not a customer survey. Adoption rates, satisfaction scores, and ROI numbers require buyer-side data we don't have. Treat as a vendor-side snapshot.
Updates: dataset refreshed quarterly. Last update: 2026-05-25. The underlying data is browsable at /tools/ai-agent-pricing-database.
Agentmelt Research. (2026). The State of AI Agents in 2026: 53-Vendor Market Analysis. Retrieved from https://agentmelt.com/reports/state-of-ai-agents-2026/
Press / analysts: [email protected]