Lindy vs Relay Pricing 2026: Free Tier and Step Costs

Verified as of 2026-06-16 against the official Lindy and Relay pricing pages cited below.

Lindy and Relay are two of the agent-style automation tools a solo founder weighs against Zapier and n8n in 2026. Their headline numbers are not comparable at a glance, because they are not even priced on the same shape: Relay publishes a free tier and per-step metering, while Lindy publishes flat monthly tiers with no free plan and no per-unit rate. This article verifies both pricing pages, then shows which shape is cheaper for which kind of work.

1. Two pricing shapes, not two prices

Relay is metered. You pick a plan for a monthly allowance of steps, and a step is consumed each time most actions run^[2]. AI model calls draw down a second meter, AI credits, so a workflow's cost is the steps it executes plus the AI credits its model calls consume. This makes Relay's bill scale with how much your workflows actually do.

Lindy is tiered. You buy Plus, Pro, or Max, and each tier carries a usage allowance sold in relative terms rather than a published unit count: Pro is described as 3x the usage of Plus, Max as 7x^[1]. The exact metered unit is not advertised, and the page lists no per-unit overage price. In practice you do not top up; you move to the next tier when you hit a wall. That trades transparency for a single predictable monthly number.

2. The free tier is the real split

Relay has a genuine free plan: $0 per month, one user, 200 steps, and 500 AI credits^[2]. It is enough to run a few small automations indefinitely at no cost, which makes Relay the right starting point for testing an idea before any spend.

Lindy has no free plan. Its sole no-cost path is a 7-day free trial, after which the cheapest option is Plus at $49.99 per month^[1]. There is no zero-cost steady state, so Lindy expects you to decide inside a week and then pay at least $49.99 to keep anything running. For a founder who wants to keep one small workflow live for free, this single fact decides it in Relay's favor.

3. Headline tiers compared

Entry and mid tiers verified against each pricing page on 2026-06-17. The included-usage units differ and are not directly comparable.

Tool	Free tier	Entry paid	Mid paid
Lindy	None (7-day trial only)[1]	Plus $49.99/mo[1]	Pro $99.99/mo (3x usage)[1]
Relay	$0/mo: 200 steps, 500 AI credits, 1 user[2]	Professional $19/mo annual: 750 steps[2]	Team $59/mo annual: 1,500 steps, 10 users[2]

The gap at the entry is wide. Relay's first paid tier is $19 per month billed annually; Lindy's is $49.99 per month, and Lindy's top published tier, Max, is $199.99^[1] against Relay's $59 Team plan^[2]. Relay also bundles 10 users into its $59 Team plan, while Lindy's tiers are differentiated by usage and connected inboxes rather than seats. On sticker price alone Relay is far cheaper at every published step; the question is whether Lindy's bundled allowance buys enough agent work to justify the higher floor.

4. What you are actually metered on

Read the meters before the price, because they decide the bill. Relay's step meter only counts actions that do work: its pricing page excludes triggers, data-transformation steps, and path and loop evaluations from step billing^[2]. That means complex routing and branching do not inflate the count; only the executed actions do. The separate AI-credit meter is drawn down when a workflow calls a GPT, Claude, or Gemini model, so AI-heavy flows burn credits faster than plain integration flows.

Lindy does not expose an equivalent unit. Its tiers are sold on relative usage allowances (Pro 3x Plus, Max 7x Plus) with no published per-unit rate and no overage price^[1]. The upside is a flat, predictable monthly cost; the downside is you cannot forecast cost from a workflow's design the way you can on Relay's step model. If you need to model cost before building, Relay's published meter is the one you can actually plug into a budget. Fold whichever you pick into your monthly tooling spend with the AI stack cost calculator.

5. Where Zapier sits in this

Founders comparing Lindy often also weigh Zapier, the incumbent. Zapier bills per task, where a task is one action a Zap completes, and it keeps a free tier of 100 tasks per month for simple two-step automations. Its entry paid plan sits in the low tens of dollars per month billed annually. That puts Zapier closer to Relay's shape, a real free tier plus per-action metering, than to Lindy's flat agent tiers.

The practical read: if you want the widest no-code app library and a free starting point, Zapier and Relay both qualify and Lindy does not. If you specifically want AI agents that chain reasoning steps rather than rule-based Zaps, that is the work Lindy's higher floor is priced for. For Zapier's exact current tiers, see the Zapier vs Make vs n8n pricing breakdown, which prices the task model against credit and execution models.

6. Which to pick

• Pick Relay if you want to start free, keep small automations running at zero cost inside 200 steps a month, or you need to forecast cost from a workflow's step count before building.
• Pick Relay's paid tiers if sticker price matters: $19/mo annual for 750 steps or $59/mo annual for 1,500 steps with 10 users undercuts Lindy at every published level.
• Pick Lindy if you want AI agents with bundled usage and a single flat monthly number, and the $49.99 Plus floor is worth not metering individual steps. Step up to Pro or Max when you hit a tier's wall.
• Either way, re-verify both pages before committing. Relay publishes steps, AI credits, and seat counts; Lindy publishes tiers and relative multiples, so confirm the trial covers your test before the 7 days expire.

For the wider automation-cost picture, the Zapier vs Make vs n8n comparison covers the task, credit, and execution models, and Gumloop vs n8n covers the credit-based AI-automation versus self-hosted choice.

All pricing figures verified against official pricing pages as of 2026-06-17.

Frequently asked questions

Does Lindy or Relay have a free plan in 2026?

Relay does; Lindy does not. Relay's free plan is $0 per month with 200 steps and 500 AI credits for one user, verified against its pricing page on 2026-06-17. Lindy has no free tier at all: its no-cost entry point is a 7-day free trial, after which the cheapest paid plan is Plus at $49.99 per month. So if you want to run a real automation at zero cost indefinitely, Relay is the one of the two that lets you, inside its 200-step monthly ceiling.

What does Lindy actually cost per month?

Lindy has three published paid tiers as of 2026-06-17: Plus at $49.99 per month, Pro at $99.99 per month, and Max at $199.99 per month, plus a custom Enterprise plan. The tiers are sold on relative usage, not a published unit count: Pro is described as 3x the usage of Plus and Max as 7x, and the exact metered unit is not advertised on the page. There is no published per-unit overage rate, so you size up a tier rather than buy extra units.

What counts as a billable step on Relay?

On Relay, most actions and automations use one step each time they run, but not all do. Its pricing page states that triggers, data-transformation steps, and path and loop evaluations are not charged as steps, so you pay for the actions that do work, not for the routing around them. Separately, AI credits are consumed when a workflow runs an action powered by a GPT, Claude, or Gemini model. Steps and AI credits are two distinct meters on the same plan.