Which professional coding agents are genuinely free?
Two current official receipts establish ongoing hosted access at $0. Neither is a trial, BYOK bill, or local-compute shift.
2verified ongoing hosted options
Do not rank these units. Amazon publishes agentic requests; JetBrains publishes AI Credits. They are native ceilings, not a common measure of tasks, tokens, or quality.
Same decision schema, different native units. Unknown means the current official documentation does not establish the detail.
Verified hosted allowance · AWS
Amazon Q Developer Free
50agentic requests/month
Eligibility
Perpetual Free Tier for an AWS IAM user or AWS Builder ID user; IDE limits are available only with Builder ID.
Access mechanism
Amazon-hosted agentic requests through the IDE plugins or CLI.
Binding limit / reset
50 agentic requests per month. IAM usage binds at account level; Builder ID usage binds at user level.
At exhaustion
Unknown from current official documentation: the pricing receipt does not state the exact hard-stop response or reset timestamp after request 50.
Restrictions
AWS says account usage may be updated for regional factors, payment history, fraudulent usage, or an approved quota increase.
Payment / routing
The receipt calls this a perpetual Free Tier at zero cost; it does not state whether a payment instrument is required for every signup path.
Safest next action
Use Builder ID for IDE or CLI work, treat request 50 as a firm wall, and do not assume automatic paid continuation.
Explicit unknowns
Exact monthly reset timestamp.
Exact product response when the agentic-request allowance is exhausted.
Verified hosted allowance · JetBrains
JetBrains AI Free
3AI Credits/30 days
Eligibility
Available to individuals and organizations in serviceable territories in supported JetBrains IDEs starting with version 2025.1.
Access mechanism
The JetBrains-managed AI service; a JetBrains AI subscription enables all AI Assistant features and supported integrated agents.
Binding limit / reset
3 AI Credits per 30 days. The quota resets every 30 days from the date the JetBrains AI license was first used.
At exhaustion
Included quota stops funding hosted use; JetBrains documents waiting for the next cycle, purchasing Top-up AI Credits, changing license, or routing to a third-party provider or agent.
Restrictions
AI Free is unavailable in Android Studio, Community Editions of PyCharm and IntelliJ IDEA, free-use PyCharm Unified, and License Server setups; territory restrictions apply.
Payment / routing
Hosted allowance uses the JetBrains AI subscription. Top-ups are paid; BYOK, OAuth, and ACP routes bill through their respective provider instead.
Safest next action
Confirm IDE and territory eligibility, activate JetBrains AI Free rather than BYOK, and watch the AI Credits counter before starting a long agent run.
Explicit unknowns
Unknown from current official documentation: how many coding-agent tasks 3 AI Credits will complete; consumption varies with tokens, complexity, context, and model cost.
Unknown from current official documentation: whether a payment instrument is required to activate AI Free.
Exclusion register
Not the same as ongoing hosted access
Mechanisms, not a provider catalog.
Trial or promotion
Temporary access expires or converts; it is not an ongoing hosted $0 allowance.
BYOK / API-paid inference
The tool may be free, but model calls bill to your API key, credits, or provider account.
Local compute
No hosted inference bill does not mean zero cost; hardware, electricity, setup, and model capability move to you.