Free tier & upgrading
New organizations start on the free tier. It's a real trial with a real ceiling, and the ceiling behaves differently from every other limit in Delegate — it doesn't reset.
Who can do what
| Task | User | Agent owner | Admin |
|---|---|---|---|
| Use the product on the free tier | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Hit the trial limit and see the upgrade prompt | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Add a payment method and upgrade | — | — | ✅ |
If you're a user and you hit the trial limit, there's nothing you can do from your own account — an admin has to add a payment method.
What the free tier gives you
- Full access to creating agents, tools, and skills.
- The same model catalogue as a paid plan. Being on the free tier does not hide paid models — an admin can enable any model the platform has published, and agents can use them. What bounds you is the allowance below, not a narrower menu. See Model access.
- A lifetime spend allowance, not a monthly one.
The trial limit doesn't reset
Every other limit in Delegate (budgets) is periodic — hourly, daily, monthly — and clears on a schedule. The free-tier allowance is cumulative across the entire life of the organization. Once your total usage reaches it, it stays reached. Waiting doesn't help.
When it's reached, tasks stop with:
🛑 Free-tier trial limit reached. Add a payment method to continue.
and the app shows an upgrade prompt rather than the usual "wait until reset" copy, because waiting is not the remedy.
The trial limit is checked before every other budget, so it's always the message you see first if it's the binding constraint.
Upgrading
An admin adds a payment method in Organization → Billing. See Plans & subscription for the full flow — payment method, terms acknowledgement, and invoices.
On upgrade, the lifetime trial limit no longer applies. Your organization is bounded by its subscription and by whatever budgets you set — budgets become the mechanism you use to control spend.
Upgrading does not change which models you can reach. Model availability is controlled by what the platform has published and what your admin has enabled in Organization → Models, not by your tier.
The trial limit was doing your spend control for you. Once it's gone, nothing caps spend unless you set it. Configuring a monthly limit at the same time you add a payment method is the cheapest way to avoid a surprising first invoice.
Free models are always free
Free models cost nothing, count nothing toward the trial limit, and are never throttled or blocked by a budget. An organization that has exhausted its trial limit can still run work on free models.
Bringing your own key
BYOK is not a way around the free tier. Usage on your own provider key is recorded and counts toward limits, even though Delegate doesn't charge a fee on it.