Best No-Code AI Agents

What no-code AI agents cost: credits, actions, executions and the monthly bill

Every platform meters agent work in its own unit. Converting those units into the cost of one task is the only way to compare them, and the only way to avoid the cost overruns Gartner expects to end many projects.

By The editors · Updated · 4 min read

Two managers at a round standing table in a glazed corridor study a printed sheet with a simple bar chart, one holding a pen above it.
An agent's cost is easiest to judge per task, not per plan.
Contents
  1. The units, platform by platform
  2. A worked example: one support agent
  3. The costs that do not show on the plan
  4. How to budget a first agent
  5. Questions buyers ask
  6. Sources

Agent pricing is usage pricing. Each platform charges in its own unit (credits, Actions, executions, tasks or message credits), and the same piece of work can cost very different amounts depending on the model, the number of tool calls and whether it succeeds. Gartner names escalating costs, alongside unclear value, as a main reason it expects more than 40% of agentic AI projects to be cancelled by the end of 2027⁠1.

The units, platform by platform

  • Copilot Studio: credits per type of action. A classic answer costs 1 credit, a generative answer 2, an agent action 5, tenant graph grounding 10, and agent-flow actions 13 credits per 100. Packs of 25,000 credits cost $200 a month⁠23.
  • Lindy: credits per task. Everyday requests use 2 to 250 credits, deeper work 250 to 1,000 and large builds 1,000 to 2,500. Team plans start at $29.99 a month per active user for 3,000 credits; top-ups are $10 per 1,000⁠4.
  • Relevance AI: Actions plus model credits. An Action is one run of a tool, failed or not; model costs pass through as vendor credits. Pro is $19 a month billed annually for 2,500 Actions; extra Actions cost $80 per 1,000⁠56.
  • n8n: executions. One run of a whole workflow, whatever its steps. Cloud Starter is €20 a month billed annually for 2,500 executions⁠7.
  • Zapier: tasks, with agent activities in transition. Higher model tiers cost one, three or five tasks per AI step⁠8; Professional starts at $19.99 a month billed annually for 750 tasks⁠9.
  • Dify: message credits per workspace. Professional is $590 a year with 5,000 message credits a month⁠10.
  • OpenLazarus: a plan that includes AI credits, plus hosting. Starter is $100 and Pro $300 a month, each including that amount in AI credits; hosting starts at $150 a month⁠1112.

A worked example: one support agent

Microsoft publishes a worked example that makes the scale concrete: a customer-support agent answering 900 customers a day uses 7,200 Copilot Credits a day⁠2. At $200 per 25,000 credits, that is about $58 a day, or roughly $1,700 over a 30-day month, before any discount for up-front commitment (our arithmetic from Microsoft's published figures). The same example shows why unit choice matters: a single message to a reasoning model uses 141 credits in Microsoft's example⁠2, so routing routine questions to cheaper answers changes the bill more than the plan does.

On Lindy, the same daily volume would depend on how many credits each conversation uses; at the low end of "everyday asks" (2 credits) it is small, and at the high end (250) it would exceed any standard pool. That spread is why a short pilot with real traffic is the only reliable estimate.

The costs that do not show on the plan

  • Failed runs. Relevance AI counts a failed tool run as an Action⁠6.
  • Caps that stop work. Lindy pauses credit-using actions when the pool runs out⁠4; Copilot Studio blocks agents above 125% of prepaid capacity, even mid-conversation⁠2. A cap protects the budget at the cost of service.
  • Governance upgrades. Audit logs and roles sit on Enterprise plans at several platforms, which can change the price more than usage does⁠6710.
  • Abuse. OWASP describes "denial of wallet" attacks that exploit pay-per-use models, and recommends rate limits and quotas⁠13.
  • People. Someone must approve actions and review the log. That time belongs in the cost per task.

How to budget a first agent

  1. Count the task volume for a normal week: emails answered, invoices chased, orders keyed.
  2. Run a two-week pilot with real traffic and record the units used per task, including failures.
  3. Multiply out to a month, add 30% for peaks, and compare with the plan's allowance.
  4. Price the plan that includes the governance you need, not the entry plan.
  5. Set a hard cap and decide in advance what happens when it is reached: pause, alert or overage.
  6. Compare the cost per task with the cost of the same task done by staff, including the approval time that remains.

An agent is worth keeping when the cost per task is known, stable and lower than the alternative, and when the approvals it still needs take minutes a day rather than hours.

Questions buyers ask

How much does an AI agent cost per month?

It depends on the platform's unit and the volume of work. Entry plans range from about $19 to $30 a month (Relevance AI, Lindy, Zapier) to $200 for 25,000 Copilot Studio credits. A busy customer-support agent can use thousands of credits a day; Microsoft's own example uses 7,200 credits a day for 900 customers.

Why do AI agent projects run over budget?

Usage-based billing grows with volume and with the complexity of each task, failed runs can still be billed, and some platforms charge more for better models. Gartner cites escalating costs among the reasons it expects over 40% of agentic AI projects to be cancelled by 2027.

Is a self-hosted agent platform cheaper?

The licence can be free, as with n8n's Community Edition or Dify's Community edition, but the company pays for servers, model usage and the person who maintains them, and loses features such as SSO and audit logs that the paid editions include.

Sources

  1. Over 40% of agentic AI projects will be scrapped by 2027, Gartner says (Reuters). Reuters via The Star, 25 Jun 2025. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  2. Billing rates and management. Microsoft Learn, 30 Oct 2026. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  3. Microsoft Copilot Studio: create AI agents. Microsoft. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  4. Pricing. Lindy. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  5. Plans and credits. Relevance AI Docs. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  6. Pricing. Relevance AI Docs. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  7. n8n plans and pricing. n8n. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  8. Zapier Agents is now AI by Zapier. Zapier. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  9. Zapier pricing. Zapier. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  10. Dify pricing. Dify. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  11. Questions about OpenLazarus (FAQ). OpenLazarus. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  12. Pricing. OpenLazarus. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.
  13. LLM10:2025 Unbounded Consumption. OWASP Gen AI Security Project. Accessed 8 Nov 2026.

Updated 8 Nov 2026: First published.

Further reading