On September 24, 2026 the Octomind free plan changes. Free stops including any cloud — no machine, no chats in the panel, no routines, connectors or live URLs — and becomes what it should have been: pure hub access from your own tools, pay as you go. One API key, every model in the catalog, the same prices subscribers pay.
If you were using a free machine, this is a real cut — the last section covers exactly what happens to yours. For everyone else it is an upgrade: free used to mean a small model roster with a daily allowance. Now it means the whole catalog.
Why we changed it
Running free cloud machines for everyone is not sustainable. We are bootstrapped, we buy hardware with revenue, and a free machine that sleeps most of the time costs us capacity while giving you very little. Live URLs on free accounts were worse: a public URL on our TLS and our brand is a phishing magnet, and that is where the abuse landed.
So we split the two things that were tangled together. The hub — models, keys, metering — is cheap to serve and gets better the more people use it. The cloud — a machine that runs your work, schedules, connectors — costs real money per account and now sits behind a subscription. A pay-as-you-go hub with a real $5 start beats a tiny machine that sleeps.
What free is now: every model, from the tools you already use
There is no free-only model list anymore and no daily allowance. A free account can call every model in the catalog through the hub, billed from prepaid credits at the provider's price plus 5% — the same rate subscribers get. Prices are on /hub and /pricing.
One key covers all of it, and it works from the tools you already have open:
- The octomind CLI — install, log in, run.
- Zed and JetBrains IDEs, through
octomind acp. - Octoweb, our free macOS browser with an AI sidebar — octoweb.xyz.
- Neovim, Obsidian, marimo, Emacs.
- Anything OpenAI-compatible: point the base URL at
https://hub.octomind.run/v1and use your key.
Three lines get you a working agent in your terminal:
curl -fsSL https://octomind.run/install.sh | bash
octomind login
octomindoctomind login runs a device flow and writes a per-device key to disk, so no secret goes through your shell history. At a $0 balance the key pauses, and it wakes automatically on your first credit.
The $5 starter credit
Every account gets a one-time $5 credit — no expiry — and existing accounts are eligible too, not just new signups. To claim it, connect a GitHub account at least 30 days old that has starred muvon/octomind. The grant is once per account and once per GitHub account.
Claim it from the panel's Hub home; subscribers claim it from Billing. We check the account's age and its star, then discard the GitHub token. Five dollars goes further than it sounds — a short debugging session on an open-weights model costs a few cents.
Parallel calls grow with what you top up
Free starts at one model call at a time. It climbs with your lifetime top-ups, and it never drops as the balance drains:
| Topped up in total | Parallel calls |
|---|---|
| $0 | 1 |
| Any top-up | 2 |
| $20 | 3 |
| $100 | 4 |
| $200 | 5 |
Five is the ceiling. The $5 starter credit does not count toward the ladder; only real top-ups do, net of refunds.
What the subscription buys
The cloud is now paid: your own machine, chats in the panel, routines that run on a schedule, Telegram/Slack/WhatsApp/GitHub connectors, and live URLs for the apps your agent builds. Details on /cloud.
- Pro — $50/month, first month $20.
- Max — $200/month, first month $80.
- Team — $500/month, first month $200.
Each subscription includes usage equal to its price, and your credits keep working past that allowance instead of cutting off at it.
If you have a free machine today
On September 24 your machines stop and your routines pause. Nothing is deleted that day. Your data — machines, files, sessions, memory — is kept for 30 days, until October 24, 2026, and subscribing at any point in that window restores it as it was. You get warnings 7 days and 1 day before deletion.
If you want the files without subscribing, start the machine before September 24 and copy them out. Or move the work to the CLI on your own laptop: same account, same key, same models.
FAQ
Is anything still free? The hub is. Signing up, keys, the CLI, the editor integrations and Octoweb cost nothing; you pay only for the model calls you make, out of credits. What is no longer free is the cloud: machines, panel chats, routines, connectors and live URLs.
Do free accounts get a model allowance? No. There is no allowance and no free-only roster. Every model in the catalog is available, billed per token from your prepaid balance at the provider's price plus 5%.
How do I get the $5? Star muvon/octomind, connect that GitHub account in the panel's Hub home, and the credit lands on your balance. The account must be at least 30 days old; the grant is once per account and once per GitHub account.
What happens to my free machine on September 24? It stops, and its routines pause. The data is kept until October 24, 2026. Subscribing before then restores everything; after that it is deleted, with warnings 7 days and 1 day ahead.
The open-source CLI is unchanged: github.com/muvon/octomind. Install it, log in, and the whole catalog is on the other side of one key.
