The AI Agent Census: A Living Report on Real AI Agents

The headlines

Most agents are personal assistants, most have a free way to start, and many of them you can simply text.

• Free to start is the norm. Most agents have a free plan or are free outright.
• Personal assistants are the biggest group. Agents that run your calendar, inbox and errands outnumber every other kind.
• Many live in apps you already use. A large share work over iMessage or SMS, WhatsApp or Telegram.
• Open source is a real force. A good number can be run on your own machine.

What agents do

A handful of kinds of work cover every agent we list. Personal assistants run your calendar, inbox and errands. Coding agents write and fix software. Browser and computer agents operate websites and apps the way you would. Support and sales agents talk to a company’s customers.

Coding agents are a smaller group with a big footprint, and many of them run in the terminal, where developers already work. Support and sales are the smallest groups because they’re sold to companies, usually after a demo, rather than to people one at a time.¹Note 1 Each agent is listed under the kind of work it’s mainly for, even when it can do more than one.

Where they run

Messaging apps are one of the most common places agents live. For personal assistants in particular, the most common home is a text thread rather than a new app.

Many agents can be reached over iMessage or SMS, and plenty work in WhatsApp. That fits what an assistant is for: you already text people to get things done, so texting an agent feels the same. Most agents run in more than one place, so you can pick the one you already use.

What they cost

Free to start is the norm. Most makers let you try before you pay.

Some agents are free outright, and many of those are open source. Another big group has a free plan with paid upgrades. The rest are paid only, in private beta, or don’t publish a price at all. For plan-by-plan prices, see AI agent pricing.

Who makes them

Big labs and small teams sit side by side. Some of the best-known agents come from the companies that build the underlying models:

Next to them are small teams that focus on one job and do it well, plus open-source projects anyone can run:

The open-source group matters more than its size suggests. When an agent can see your files, your inbox or your accounts, being able to read its code and run it on your own computer is a real advantage.

Our take

A few things stand out from watching this list change. These are opinions, not counts.

• Agents are moving into the apps you already use. The growth is in text threads, Slack and the terminal, not in new apps to download.
• ”Asks before it acts” is becoming the standard. The agents people trust with money and messages show you what they’re about to do and wait for a yes.
• Most launches don’t qualify. New products called agents appear all the time. Many are tools for building agents, apps with a chat box inside, or demos behind a waitlist. The real ones are a much shorter list, which is why we keep one.

How this census is made

Every listing comes from the maker’s own pages. New launches are checked as they appear and existing listings are re-checked often, and a change goes live only when the official site shows it. The full method is on How we verify.

The data is open. You can use the whole directory as a file at agents.json under a Creative Commons Attribution license; please credit “AIcensus, aicensus.co”. Writers and researchers are welcome to cite this page, and its agent cards will still be current when your readers click through.