# What OpenHands costs, and what an open-source alternative bills

> OpenHands is open source and free to run on your own machine; its Cloud Individual tier is listed as free with a 10-conversation daily cap. What a team pays is model tokens, the compute the agent runs on, and the platform around it. Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System, and it bills those three items from one balance.

URL: https://openhands-alternative.com/openhands-cost

## What each option actually bills you for

The plan shapes and published rates on Kortix's pricing page and OpenHands' own pricing page.

| | Kortix (recommended) | OpenHands |
| --- | --- | --- |
| Free tier | $0, 200 credits a month, 1 project. | $0 local install; hosted Individual tier listed free, 10 conversations a day. |
| Open source | Open source. Read it, fork it, audit it. | Yes. The local agent is free to run and self-host. |
| Per-seat price | $40 per seat per month, with 2,500 pooled credits included. | No per-seat rate published. Individual is free; Enterprise is contact us. |
| What the seat includes | 2,500 credits per month per seat, pooled; any model provider with your own keys. | Hosted cloud, API, Jira and Slack integrations, BYOK or models at cost. |
| Credits included | 200 credits a month; 2,500 credits per month per seat, pooled. | Your own machine or host; Remote Runtime lists $0.35 per compute-unit hour. |
| How model usage is billed | Any model provider with your own keys. Or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for. | Your key pays the provider; its provider bills at cost, no markup. |
| Plan limits | Free: 1 project, 200 credits a month. | Individual: 1 person, 10 conversations a day. Enterprise: contact us. |
| Self-hosting and enterprise | Self-host is free. Enterprise adds SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0. | Self-host your way; Enterprise VPC deployment is quote-based, price not published. |

Rival figures read from OpenHands' own pricing and runtime pages; Kortix figures from its pricing page. Checked October 2026.

## The two plans, quoted

`kortix.com/pricing`

```
Free is $0 with 200 credits per month and 1 project.
The team plan is $40 per seat per month with 2,500 credits per month per seat, pooled.
Self-host is free.
```

Source: https://kortix.com/pricing

## What a coding agent's bill contains

A coding agent bill has three lines, and only one of them is a subscription. The first is the platform: a seat, a plan, or nothing when you run the software yourself. The second is the sandbox the agent works in, billed while it runs. The third is model tokens, which follow whoever holds the API key.

OpenHands and Kortix split those lines differently. OpenHands is an open-source coding agent that runs on your own machine; OpenHands Cloud is the hosted tier, with a free Individual plan and a commercial Enterprise plan ([OpenHands pricing](https://www.openhands.dev/pricing)). Kortix is the open-source AI Operating System: a session runs one agent in its own sandbox, and the work reaches the default branch through a change request a person merges.

To estimate a month, multiply three numbers: seats by seat price, sandbox hours by the hourly compute rate, and tokens by your provider's rate. Keep the first number even when it is zero, because a zero platform line usually moves the money into one of the other two. Kortix publishes the seat price and the pooled credits on one page, which is what makes the estimate possible; the comparison table on this page sets them beside OpenHands'.

## Why "free" and "open source" answer different questions

Free is a price. Open source is access to the code: you can read it, fork it and audit it, and you can run it yourself. A tool can be open source and still cost money every month, because tokens and compute are not free anywhere. A hosted plan can list a zero price and stay closed, capped at a usage limit.

"Is OpenHands free" and "is OpenHands open source" therefore have different answers. The [is OpenHands open source](/is-openhands-open-source) page takes the second question. On the first, OpenHands' own pricing page lists a local option at $0 and a hosted Individual plan at $0 with a 10-conversation daily cap, and it sends Enterprise to a contact form with no published seat rate (checked October 2026). Model usage is published instead: bring your own key, or use the OpenHands provider at provider rates with no markup, pay-as-you-go ([provider pricing](https://docs.openhands.dev/openhands/usage/llms/openhands-llms)). Hosted runtime is a third charge, listed at $0.35 per Runtime Compute Unit hour, one unit being a CPU core with 4 GB of memory ([runtime pricing](https://runtime.all-hands.dev)).

## What the Kortix free tier covers

Kortix Free is $0 and includes 200 credits a month and 1 project ([Kortix](https://kortix.com/pricing)). Model usage runs on any model provider with your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for.

A team buys seats when the free tier stops fitting: a second project, more credits than 200 a month, or several people starting sessions. Team is $40 per seat per month with 2,500 credits per seat, pooled.

## Self-hosted and enterprise: what you pay instead

Self-hosting moves the seat line into your infrastructure bill. Kortix self-host is free: the `kortix self-host` commands install and run the full stack on infrastructure you control, and you pay for the hosts you rent and the model keys you hold ([self-hosting](/self-hosting)). OpenHands does not publish a self-hosted price on its pricing page either, so a self-hosted rollout costs the machines you run it on and the tokens your agents spend.

Enterprise is where a platform fee returns for both products. Kortix Enterprise adds SAML 2.0 single sign-on and SCIM 2.0, per-resource permissions for people and agents, roles, groups, and an audit trail. Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. OpenHands Enterprise is self-hosted in your VPC with single sign-on and priority support, also quote-based. If OpenHands is not the only option on your list, the [OpenHands alternatives](/openhands-alternatives) page covers the shape of each one.

## The cost questions buyers ask first

### How much does OpenHands cost?

OpenHands lists a free local option and a free Individual cloud plan, capped at 10 conversations a day, and quotes Enterprise on request. Your key pays your model provider, its own provider bills at provider rates without markup, and hosted runtime is listed at $0.35 per compute-unit hour.

### Is Kortix free?

Yes. Kortix Free costs $0 and carries 200 credits a month and 1 project; self-host is free too. The team plan is $40 per seat per month with 2,500 credits per month per seat, pooled. Model usage runs on any model provider with your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for.

### What does a Kortix seat include?

A seat is $40 per seat per month. It adds 2,500 credits per month per seat, pooled. Model usage runs on any model provider with your own keys, or the ChatGPT plan you already pay for.

### What does a self-hosted deployment cost?

The Kortix platform is free to self-host; the cost is the infrastructure you rent and the model keys you hold. OpenHands does not publish a self-hosted price on its pricing page, so that path is machines plus tokens until you agree Enterprise terms.