# Warp Pricing Explained: What $20 a Month Buys Now > Warp is free, Build is $20 a month and Max is $200. In October 2026 the plans switched from credits to dollars, and Max lost about 17% of its included usage. Source: https://capitalandcompute.net/blog/warp-pricing-explained/ Published: 2026-10-10 Updated: 2026-10-12 **The short answer.** Warp’s terminal is free. The Warp Agent costs **$20 a month on Build** ($18 billed annually), which includes $20 of agent usage at API rates, or **$200 a month on Max** for $200 of usage. Business is $50 per seat. Free includes no agent usage at all, but you can bring your own API key on any plan and pay the model provider directly. That is the [pricing page](https://www.warp.dev/pricing) as of 10 October 2026, and it is not the pricing page most guides describe. Until the end of September, Warp sold its plans in credits: 1,500 a month on Build and 18,000 on Max. Sometime between 29 September and 7 October 2026 (the two [Wayback Machine captures of warp.dev/pricing](https://web.archive.org/web/2026%2A/warp.dev/pricing) on either side of the change), the page switched to dollars. Headline prices did not move. What Max includes did. ## How much does Warp cost? | Plan | Monthly | Annual (per month) | Included agent usage | Who can buy it | Bring your own key | | ---------- | ------------ | ------------------ | ------------------------- | -------------------- | ------------------------ | | Free | $0 | $0 | None | Anyone | Yes | | Build | $20 | $18 | $20 at API rates | Anyone | Yes | | Max | $200 | $180 | $200 (10× Build) | Anyone | Yes | | Business | $50 per seat | $45 per seat | $20 per seat | Teams up to 25 seats | Yes | | Enterprise | Custom | Custom | Shared pools, by contract | Unlimited seats | Yes, plus your own cloud | Source: [Warp pricing page](https://www.warp.dev/pricing), read 10 October 2026\. Bring-your-own-key is limited to individuals and companies with 10 or fewer employees on the self-serve plans, per [Warp’s pricing FAQ](https://docs.warp.dev/support-and-community/plans-and-billing/pricing-faqs/). Bigger companies need Business or Enterprise for it. “At API rates” is the phrase doing the work. It means the $20 inside Build buys roughly what $20 would buy if you called Anthropic or OpenAI yourself: no markup, and no discount either. Warp’s model list covers Fable 5, Claude Opus 5, GPT-5.6, Gemini 3.1 Pro, GLM 5.2 and Kimi K3, so the same $20 runs out several times faster on Opus than on GLM. Two parts of the bill sit outside that table: * **Add-on usage.** When the monthly allowance is gone, premium models pause until the next cycle unless you buy top-ups or turn on auto-reload. That is the next section, and it is where the price per unit moves. * **Warp Factories.** The cloud “factory” product has its own plans. Pay as you go bills usage at “20% above API rates”, and its Build tier at API rates. Factory usage is billed separately from the terminal plans above. ## What changed in October 2026? Here are the two versions of the Max line, word for word. **29 September 2026 capture:** “18,000 credits (12× the included usage of Build)”. Build, on the same page: “1,500 credits ($20 of included agent usage at API rates)”. **10 October 2026, live page:** “$200 of agent usage included each month (10× Build)”. Warp’s own September page set the exchange rate: 1,500 credits was $20 of usage, so one credit was worth about 1.33 cents. At that rate, Max’s 18,000 credits were $240 of usage. Today Max includes $200\. Same $200 price, about **$40 less usage a month, a 16.7% cut**, and the multiplier on the page dropped from 12× to 10× to match. $240 Max usage before 18,000 credits at Warp's $20 per 1,500 $200 Max usage now stated in dollars, Oct 2026 \-16.7% included usage same $200 a month price Build and Business did not lose anything: $20 of usage before, $20 now. The cut lands only on the plan Warp used to sell as the bulk discount. A Max subscriber who used to get 20% more usage per dollar than a Build subscriber now gets exactly the same per dollar, just more of it. Nothing on the page announces this, and as of 10 October there is no Warp blog post about it. The [whichcodingtools tracker logged the switch on 8 October](https://github.com/benjamincanac/whichcodingtools/pull/171), noting that headline prices were unchanged. That is a third-party record, but the two archived captures show the same thing directly. If you were on Max for the volume discount, re-run the math against buying top-ups on Build, which is the next question. ## What does a Warp top-up cost? Warp still sells top-ups in credits, not dollars. The [add-on credits page](https://docs.warp.dev/support-and-community/plans-and-billing/add-on-credits/), last updated 9 October 2026, lists four packs: | Pack | Price | Cost per credit | Cost per 1,000 credits | | ------------- | ----- | --------------- | ---------------------- | | 400 credits | $10 | 2.5¢ | $25.00 | | 1,000 credits | $20 | 2.0¢ | $20.00 | | 3,000 credits | $50 | 1.67¢ | $16.67 | | 6,500 credits | $100 | 1.54¢ | $15.38 | Add-on credits roll over and stay valid for 12 months from purchase, which the monthly allowance does not (included usage resets every 30 days from your signup date). Auto-reload buys another pack when the balance drops under 100 credits, up to a monthly spend limit that defaults to $200\. Free users can buy packs too, at a higher rate that Warp does not print on the page. __Cost per 1,000 Warp credits, included allowance vs top-up packs__ | Item | Value | | ------------------------ | ------ | | Included in Build | $13.33 | | 6,500-credit pack ($100) | $15.38 | | 3,000-credit pack ($50) | $16.67 | | 1,000-credit pack ($20) | $20.00 | | 400-credit pack ($10) | $25.00 | What 1,000 credits of Warp agent usage cost, by how you buy them. The included allowance is valued at Warp's last published rate (1,500 credits for $20, September 2026). Even the biggest top-up pack costs 15% more per credit; the smallest costs 88% more.Source: [Warp, Add-on credits documentation and pricing page (Wayback capture 29 Sep 2026)](https://docs.warp.dev/support-and-community/plans-and-billing/add-on-credits/) Here’s the catch. The pricing page now talks in dollars and the top-up page still talks in credits, and Warp no longer publishes what a credit is worth. The last rate Warp printed (1,500 credits for $20, so 1.33 cents) makes every pack a premium: 15% on the $100 pack, 88% on the $10 pack. Competitor Kilo Code made the same point in a [critical post on the original Build launch](https://blog.kilo.ai/p/warps-new-pricing-still-doesnt-add) in October 2025, calling reloads “2x more expensive than base credits”; that was a rival’s reading, but the pack prices bear it out at the small end. What this means in practice: if you burn through Build’s $20 by the third week most months, another 1,500 credits of usage (what $20 bought inside the plan) costs about $23 in the biggest pack and $38 in the smallest. Max only makes sense once you would otherwise buy more than about $180 of packs a month, and since October that $200 buys a sixth less usage than it did. ## Does bringing your own API key make Warp free? For local use on a personal plan, nearly. Requests sent with your own key [don’t consume Warp’s AI credits](https://docs.warp.dev/support-and-community/plans-and-billing/pricing-faqs/), and the provider bills you directly. Warp opened bring-your-own-key to every plan, Free included, on 21 May 2026\. [Warp’s model docs](https://docs.warp.dev/agents/inference/model-choice/) also let you run OpenAI models through a ChatGPT subscription and Grok through SuperGrok instead of Warp credits. Two cases still cost Warp money, both through “platform credits”, which [Warp bills per agent hour](https://docs.warp.dev/support-and-community/plans-and-billing/platform-credits/): 1. **Every cloud agent run, on every plan**, whoever supplies the model. A 15-minute cloud run is a quarter of an agent hour. 2. **Local runs on Business or Enterprise** that use your own key or endpoint. Local runs on Free, Build or Max with your own key don’t touch platform credits. The harness matters too: with Warp’s own agent, only time spent generating counts, so a five-minute test suite is free. With the Claude Code or Codex harness in a cloud run, the whole run is billable, waiting included. Warp’s docs say “See Warp pricing for current rates”, and the pricing page did not list an agent-hour rate when it was read for this piece. So the cheapest serious setup is Free plus your own key, used locally. You give up Warp-hosted models and the extended cloud agents; you keep the terminal and the agent. That is the same trade [covered across 13 agent platforms in the BYOK comparison](/blog/which-ai-agent-platforms-support-byok/): your own key removes the model margin, not always the platform fee. ## Which Warp plan should you pick? * **You want the terminal, not the agent:** Free. It’s a complete terminal. * **You use the agent a few times a day and already pay for an API key or ChatGPT:** Free with your own key, locally. Upgrade only if you want Warp-hosted models in one place. * **You want Warp to supply the models and you’re a moderate user:** Build at $20, or $18 on annual. Top up with the 3,000 or 6,500 pack, not the $10 one. * **You’d spend more than about $180 a month on top-ups:** Max. Below that line, Build plus packs is cheaper or close. * **A team over 10 people that needs its own keys:** Business is the only self-serve route, and it adds platform credits on local key runs. ## How to get started with Warp without overpaying 1. Install the free terminal and connect your own Anthropic or OpenAI key (or a ChatGPT subscription) before you subscribe. A week of real use shows you how much agent work you actually do. 2. If you do subscribe, check Settings > Billing and usage after a week. The included allowance resets 30 days from signup, not on the 1st. 3. Leave auto-reload off until you know your burn rate. When you turn it on, the default cap is $200 a month; set it lower. 4. Buy the larger packs. The $10 pack is the most expensive way to buy Warp usage. 5. Keep cloud agent runs for work that needs them. They bill platform time on every plan, even with your own key. 6. If you cancel a monthly plan, do it within 24 hours of the charge and before you use any credits to get a full refund. Annual plans give 15 days on the same condition. ## Is Warp worth it? For a terminal, yes, and it costs nothing. For the agent, the $20 Build plan is priced like the rest of the field: [Cursor’s Pro tier](/blog/cursor-pricing-limits-explained/) and [Kiro’s Pro](/blog/kiro-pricing-explained-free-tier-credits/) sit at the same $20\. Warp’s October switch makes it work like Cursor: a dollar pool spent at API rates, easier to reason about than Kiro’s credits. The gap is at the top. Cursor’s $200 Ultra tier includes roughly $400 of API-rate usage by the estimates in that post, while Warp’s $200 Max now includes $200. The part to watch is Max. A plan that lost a sixth of its usage without an announcement may move again, so pay monthly on Max until the pricing settles. For where Warp sits among terminal and editor agents, the [best AI agent harnesses](/best-ai-agent-harnesses/) page and the [AI pricing tracker](/ai-pricing/) put it next to the alternatives. ## Frequently asked questions Is Warp free? The Warp terminal is free, and since 21 May 2026 the Free plan can run the Warp Agent with your own API key. Free includes no Warp-supplied agent usage; you either bring a key, buy add-on credits at a higher rate, or upgrade to Build at $20 a month. How much does Warp Build cost? Build is $20 a month, or $18 a month billed annually. It includes $20 of agent usage each month at API rates, which resets every 30 days from your signup date and does not roll over. Is Warp Max worth it over Build? Only for heavy users. Max is $200 for $200 of usage, the same rate as Build. Before October 2026 it included 18,000 credits, worth about $240 at Warp's own published rate, so the volume discount is gone. Max makes sense once you would otherwise buy more than about $180 of top-ups a month. Do Warp credits roll over? Included monthly usage does not roll over. Add-on credits you buy do: they stay valid for 12 months from purchase and remain usable even if you drop to the Free plan. What are Warp platform credits? Platform credits pay for Warp's cloud agent layer and are billed per agent hour, prorated. Every cloud agent run uses them on every plan, and local runs on Business or Enterprise use them when you bring your own model key. Local runs on Free, Build or Max do not. ## Sources * Warp (2026). _Pricing_ \[vendor pricing page; plans, prices, included usage, Factories rates\]. * Internet Archive (2026). _Wayback Machine captures of warp.dev/pricing, 23 September, 29 September and 7 October 2026_ \[archived vendor page; credit-based plan wording before the change\]. * Warp (2026). _Add-on credits_ \[vendor documentation, updated 9 October 2026; pack prices, rollover, auto-reload, spend limit\]. * Warp (2026). _Pricing FAQs_ \[vendor documentation; resets, rollover, BYOK eligibility, refunds\]. * Warp (2026). _Platform credits_ \[vendor documentation; agent-hour billing rules by plan and harness\]. * Warp (2026). _Model choice_ \[vendor documentation; ChatGPT and SuperGrok subscription routing\]. * whichcodingtools (2026). _data(warp): included usage now in USD, not credits_, pull request #171 \[third-party pricing tracker, 8 October 2026\]. * Turcotte, B. / Kilo Code (2025). _Warp’s New Pricing Still Doesn’t Add Up_ \[competitor blog, 31 October 2025\].