Vellum is free to download and start. That sentence is on Vellum's own site, and it is true: the assistant runs on your machine by default, and Vellum says your memory and your credentials vault stay there rather than on its servers. The qu...
Vellum is free to download and start. That sentence is on Vellum's own site, and it is true: the assistant runs on your machine by default, and Vellum says your memory and your credentials vault stay there rather than on its servers.
The question that actually decides a purchase is the next one. Free for whom, and for how long?
What the free download covers
Vellum describes a local assistant: it runs on your machine or in Vellum Cloud, it is reachable from every device you use, and it remembers you over time. Its page also says you can switch between models, including open weights through Ollama. Nothing about that first experience carries a price. If you are one person trying an assistant on your own laptop, you can start today for $0.
What the paid tiers add
Vellum Cloud is where the subscription starts. Its pricing page lists three plans: Mighty at $30 per month, Super at $100 per month and Ultra at $200 per month, each with dedicated compute, storage and bundled credits. That is the cost of an always-on assistant that lives in Vellum's cloud instead of on your machine, and it is a fair price for what it is.
What an open-source system you own costs
There is a third shape the "is it free" question usually leaves out: run the system yourself and keep it. Kortix is open source, and its own site prices hosting the plain way: "Run it on Kortix Cloud, in your VPC, or on your own on-prem network. Self-host is free." If you would rather have managed hosting, the number is published too: "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."
The difference is not really the number. It is what happens the day you want to change how the thing works. With an open-source system you can read the code, change the configuration, and keep the whole system in a repository your team owns. With a subscription, you ask the vendor.
The question to ask before you pay anything
Whichever way you go, ask where the work lives when the subscription ends. An assistant shaped around one person is a genuinely good fit for one person. A team that wants its agents, its memory and its connector rules to be files a person can review and keep is asking a different question, and it should be priced on what it actually owns.
The full breakdown of the free tier, the cloud plans and the self-hosted path is at Is Vellum free? What an open-source alternative costs to self-host.