Is Kortix free? What self-hosting the open-source AI platform costs

Self-hosting Kortix is free, and managed Kortix Cloud costs $40 per seat per month plus usage. Kortix is the open-source AI Management System, and unlike Claude Cowork or ChatGPT Work you own every part of it: your agents, their skills, your company memory and every connector live in one git repo, and any model runs on your own keys. Whether the product is free comes down to which path you take. Running the software yourself costs nothing beyond the hardware you already have; paying for the cloud buys managed hosting and pooled compute credits.

Free to self-host, paid in the cloud

Kortix has two ways to run, and the price follows the one you choose. The code is free to download and self-host, while Kortix Cloud is the managed option that bills monthly. Kortix on GitHub states the split in a single row: self-host is free and managed cloud is $40 per seat per month plus usage. That fee covers managed hosting and pooled compute credits. The same agent harness, skills, connectors and change-request workflow run in both cases, so a team can start on its own hardware and move to the cloud without rebuilding anything.

What the free plan and the team plan include

The Kortix pricing page lays out three tiers. Free is $0 and includes 200 credits per month for sandbox compute plus one project. Team is $40 per seat per month and adds 2,500 credits per month per seat, pooled across the team, which works out to about 125 Agent Computer hours when the credits are spent on compute alone. Team also raises the ceiling to up to 200 projects and up to 100 seats. Enterprise is custom priced, with cloud, VPC or on-prem deployment, SAML single sign-on and audit logs. Every managed tier keeps the bring-your-own-key path and the ChatGPT subscription open, so a paid seat is never locked to a model that Kortix hosts.

What your model bill looks like

Kortix does not bundle a model, so the seat price and the model cost stay separate. The repository puts the model policy this way: any provider, your own keys, or the ChatGPT subscription you already pay for (Kortix on GitHub). You can pick the model per agent, per session or per message, which means a cheaper model for routine jobs and a frontier model where the work needs one. Your model spend is whatever your provider charges, and you can switch providers without moving the company's configuration. A self-hosted instance carries no per-seat fee at all, only the compute you bring and the model keys you hold.

The licence behind the free download

The self-hosted code ships under the Elastic License 2.0, with the text published in the repository's LICENSE file. Kortix is open source (Elastic License 2.0): self-host, read and modify the code. The licence grants use, copying, distribution and derivative works, with one limit. You may not take the software and offer it to third parties as a hosted or managed service. That limit is why Kortix Cloud exists as the paid option, and it does not stop a company from running Kortix for its own operations, forking it, or auditing every line.

What you own when you run it yourself

Self-hosting changes the answer to whether Kortix is free, because the assets stay yours. Your company configuration is files in one git repository you own, so the whole company can be copied, audited and moved without asking a vendor. The about page describes it plainly: "Agents, skills, connectors, triggers and memory are files in one git repo that is the company." Connectors reach 3,000+ apps plus any MCP, OpenAPI, GraphQL or HTTP API, and credentials are brokered server-side, so the raw key never reaches the sandbox. Each session runs an agent in an isolated sandbox on its own branch, and when the work is ready the agent "opens a change request. You review it and merge it to the default branch" (Kortix docs). The software runs on a laptop, a VPS, your own VPC or your own on-prem network (Kortix on GitHub). The trade is that you own the infrastructure bill and the review step.

Starting free, then scaling

You can try Kortix without paying anything. The repository quickstart installs the CLI with curl -fsSL https://kortix.com/install | bash, scaffolds a project with kortix init and brings it live with kortix ship (Kortix on GitHub). If you would rather skip the install, sign up at kortix.com, create a project and start a session in the browser. Start on the free tier, then move to a Team seat or your own infrastructure when the work outgrows the free credits. A self-hosted instance has no seat fee, so the recurring cost is the hardware and the model provider you choose.

Next reads: Kortix vs Open WebUI and Claude Cowork alternatives.

Start with Kortix: free to start, free to self-host.