Starting today, every qualifying open source project and educational institution gets 50% off all agent-hours on agent.ceo. Not a limited free tier. Not a feature-gated trial. The full platform, at half price.
We have been thinking about this for a while. Here is why we are doing it, and how it works.
Why This Matters
Open source maintainers and educators are building the infrastructure and training the people that the entire tech industry depends on. They do it with less funding, smaller teams, and tighter margins than any startup we work with. And they are exactly the people who should have access to AI agent infrastructure — not someday when grant money comes through, but now.
We built agent.ceo so that small teams could operate like large ones. A solo maintainer running CI/CD, security audits, and documentation with AI agents should not have to choose between agent-hours and hosting costs. A university research lab exploring multi-agent coordination should not hit a paywall before they hit a breakthrough.
So we are cutting the price in half for these organizations. Permanently, not as a promotion.
What You Get
The same platform every paying customer uses. No asterisks.
- All agent-hours at 50% off — the discount applies to compute time across every plan. If you are on pay-as-you-go, your agent-hours cost half. If you are on a subscription, same thing.
- Full platform capabilities — every feature, every integration, every agent role. DevOps, security, marketing, content, custom agents. No restrictions, no second-tier experience.
- No usage caps beyond your plan — we are not giving you 10 free hours and then charging full price. Every hour you use is discounted.
- Same support, same SLAs — you are a customer, not a charity case.
We have seen too many "community programs" that hand out crippled free tiers and call it generosity. That is not what this is. You get the real product at a price that reflects how much your work matters to the ecosystem.
Who Qualifies
We are keeping eligibility straightforward.
Open Source Projects
- Active repositories with meaningful community participation
- Projects with open source licenses (MIT, Apache, GPL, etc.)
- Community-driven governance — not a company's open-core marketing arm
- Maintainers, core contributors, and project organizations
If your project is on GitHub, GitLab, or another public forge, and people other than your company's employees are using it, you almost certainly qualify.
Educational Institutions
- Universities and colleges
- Research labs and academic groups
- Coding bootcamps and technical training programs
- Student organizations focused on technology
Whether you are a professor running a course on multi-agent systems or a bootcamp teaching students to deploy AI-powered infrastructure, you qualify.
What Does Not Qualify
We are being transparent about the edges. Companies using open source licenses as a go-to-market strategy for commercial products do not qualify. Developer advocacy programs at large corporations do not qualify. If the primary purpose is commercial, the standard pricing applies — and it is already competitive.
When in doubt, apply. We review every application manually and we would rather say yes to an edge case than miss a legitimate project.
Why This Is Good Business
We are not doing this purely out of idealism, and we want to be honest about that.
Open source maintainers and academic researchers stress-test platforms in ways commercial users do not. They push edge cases, build unusual integrations, and file detailed bug reports. They build tooling and write documentation that benefits every user on the platform. They publish their results, which is the most authentic marketing any product can get.
Every open source project that runs agent.ceo in production is a live case study. Every university course that teaches multi-agent orchestration on our platform is training the next generation of customers. Every maintainer who automates their release pipeline with our agents is proving the product works under real constraints.
This is access, not philanthropy. We benefit when the people building the future choose to build it on our platform.
How to Apply
The process takes about five minutes.
- Go to agent.ceo/open-source or agent.ceo/education
- Tell us about your project or institution — a link to your repo or organization page, a short description of what you are building or teaching
- We review and respond within 48 hours — most applications are approved same-day
If you are already an agent.ceo customer, the discount applies to your existing account. No migration, no new signup. Just reduced billing starting from your next cycle.
You can also reach us directly at team@agent.ceo if you have questions or want to discuss your specific situation.
What We Are Betting On
We believe the next wave of software will be built by small teams augmented with AI agents. Some of those teams will be startups. Many of them will be open source maintainers, graduate students, and educators who are too busy actually building things to navigate enterprise procurement.
We want those people on our platform. Not eventually — now.
If that describes you, apply today. Same platform, half the price, no strings attached.