Phidata: the address we list now redirects elsewhere · last checked 10 Nov 2026
Phidata
Agno (formerly Phidata) is an open-source Python agent SDK with a free self-hosted AgentOS runtime and a $150/mo control plane
The pricing split is refreshingly honest: you pay for the control plane, never the runtime or the volume you serve, and Free at $0 is a working product rather than a demo. Pro's $150/mo covers one live connection and three seats, and the add-ons ($30/seat, $95/connection, $300/mo for SAML SSO) can stack up for bigger teams. Only pick it if someone on your side can own a stateful service and its database.
Verdict generatedLast checked 6d ago · cite: rightaichoice.com/tools/phidata
- Engineering teams that need traces, RBAC and audit logs on production multi-agent systems
- Companies whose policy requires agent data and compute to stay in their own cloud or on-premise
- Developers who want a framework-agnostic runtime that also serves LangGraph, DSPy or Claude SDK agents
- Teams serving high-volume customer-facing agents without per-token, egress or retention metering
- Teams that need arbitrary custom graph workflows or complex state machines as the core abstraction
- Buyers who want a fully managed hosted agent service with zero infrastructure ownership
- Groups with no one comfortable operating a stateful service, its database and schema migrations
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Skip Agno if you want a fully managed agent host with zero infrastructure to operate, or if your architecture depends on arbitrary custom graph workflows rather than agents, teams and workflows.
Every extra teammate past the three included in Pro is $30/mo, so a ten-person platform team adds $210/mo on top of the $150 base.
At $150/mo for a control plane with one live AgentOS connection and 3 seats, Pro prices near a single mid-tier managed agent subscription and stays far below per-token agent platforms at high volume — but it assumes you supply the compute. Teams under three people can stay on the $0 Free tier indefinitely; teams past five people or two environments should model $30/mo seats and $95/mo connections before committing.
In short
Phidata — Agno (formerly Phidata) is an open-source Python agent SDK with a free self-hosted AgentOS runtime and a $150/mo control plane. Best for Engineering teams that need traces, RBAC and audit logs on production multi-agent systems, Companies whose policy requires agent data and compute to stay in their own cloud or on-premise, Developers who want a framework-agnostic runtime that also serves LangGraph, DSPy or Claude SDK agents. Free to start; paid plans from $150/mo.
No head-to-head comparison for Phidata yet — the alternatives below are the closest matches we list.
What is Phidata?
Phidata — Agno (formerly Phidata) is an open-source Python agent SDK with a free self-hosted AgentOS runtime and a $150/mo control plane. Best for Engineering teams that need traces, RBAC and audit logs on production multi-agent systems, Companies whose policy requires agent data and compute to stay in their own cloud or on-premise, Developers who want a framework-agnostic runtime that also serves LangGraph, DSPy or Claude SDK agents. Free to start; paid plans from $150/mo.
Agno — the company you may still know as Phidata — packages an open-source Python agent SDK with AgentOS, a runtime that turns those agents into a REST API, an MCP server for Claude and ChatGPT, and chat interfaces on Slack, Discord and WhatsApp. It targets engineering teams that want to build real agents for their product or customers while keeping every byte of agent data inside their own cloud. The SDK gives you three composition patterns — agents, teams and workflows — plus 100+ toolkits and a unified API spanning 30+ model providers with fallback models and tool retries. Memory, knowledge, learning, sessions, evaluations, guardrails and human-in-the-loop approvals share one execution layer, so a support agent and a research workflow reuse the same primitives instead of gluing separate libraries together. The runtime side is where Agno spends its engineering budget: durable execution, distributed state, checkpointing, resumable streaming, websockets, background execution, run cancellation, session isolation, JWT-based RBAC and audit logs across 80+ endpoints. A no-code Studio, a scheduler and a control plane for traces, sessions, evals, usage metrics and approvals sit on top. Recent work leans into self-driving infrastructure: the CompanyOS launch, an engineering post on self-improving agent infrastructure, and v3.0.11 adding MMR and Recency rerankers on any vector database. Pricing separates ownership from convenience. The runtime is free at any scale with no per-event, token, compute, storage, retention or egress fees; Pro at $150/mo connects the control plane to one live AgentOS with three seats. Against managed hosts like LangGraph Platform you trade a hosted experience for control of your own database and cloud.
Key features
- Open-source Python SDK with agents, teams and workflows primitives
- 100+ toolkits for tools, skills and multimodal capabilities
- Unified API across 30+ model providers with fallback models and tool retries
- Run agents built with Agno SDK, LangGraph, DSPy, Claude SDK, Codex SDK or custom code
- AgentOS runtime serves agents as a REST API, an MCP server and A2A
- Durable execution, distributed state, checkpointing and event buffering
- Resumable streaming, websockets, background execution and run cancellation
- Session isolation, JWT auth, service accounts and role-based access control
- Audit logs, guardrails and human-in-the-loop approvals
- Control Plane for traces, sessions, metrics, memory, knowledge and evaluations
- No-code Studio plus a scheduler for recurring runs and workflow triggers
- MMR and recency rerankers that run on any vector database (v3.0.11)
- Structured outputs, OpenAPI schema and horizontal scaling with rate limits
- Chat interfaces for Slack, Discord and WhatsApp
- Runs in any cloud, on-premise or locally wherever a container runs
Behind the verdict
Where Agno earns its keep is the moment you outgrow a notebook. You build an agent, then you need sessions, traces, retries, access control and an audit trail — and suddenly you're writing plumbing for a month. Agno's bet is that this plumbing should ship in the runtime, not your repo. In practice that means AgentOS handles durable execution, checkpointing, resumable streams and RBAC while the SDK keeps agents, teams and workflows close to plain Python. Pick it if your policy or your customers demand that agent data and compute stay in your cloud or on-premise. The control plane talks to your AgentOS over a live connection; Agno's page is explicit that it never holds a copy of your data. Pick it too if you're serving high volume and hate per-token meters — there's no per-event, egress or retention charge on any plan, which is rare in this category. Pass if nobody on the team wants to operate a stateful service, its database and its schema migrations. The vendor leans hard on coding agents managing setup and lifecycle, and the product assumes Python. Teams that want a prompt-only builder or a fully managed host should look at LangGraph Platform instead — you'll pay with engineer hours in one direction or vendor lock-in in the other. Watch the add-on math. Pro's $150/mo is a fair operating price, but a five-person team plus a second live runtime lands near $350/mo before SAML SSO, which is a $300/mo add-on. Enterprise is where end-user management and per-resource RBAC live. Two caveats from us. First, the CompanyOS launch and the self-improving-infrastructure posts signal a fast-moving roadmap; figure out which pieces are shipped versus narrative before you standardize. Second, the framework-agnostic claim is real — LangGraph, DSPy, Claude SDK and custom code all run
Models under the hood
as of 2026-11-08
Limitations
- The Free plan ($0/mo) has unlimited usage and retention but a local-only control plane; running a live AgentOS requires Pro at $150/mo, which includes one live AgentOS connection and 3 team seats.
- Additional seats are $30/mo each, additional live connections $95/mo each, and SAML SSO is a $300/mo add-on rather than part of Pro.
- End-user management, end-user audit logs, end-user identity/roles and custom per-resource RBAC are Enterprise-only, and self-hosted control plane plus custom model training are Enterprise add-ons.
- You own your data and compute with no per-event, compute, storage, retention or egress fees, but you carry the infrastructure cost and operational work of running AgentOS yourself.
as of 2026-10-20
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Is Phidata still active?
Phidata: the address we list now redirects elsewhere · last checked 10 Nov 2026.
Viability score
How well maintained and how widely used is Phidata? Built from what the vendor actually publishes (docs, changelog, tutorials, integrations, pricing), whether the site is live, and how much real users discuss it. How we calculate this
Last calculated: November 2026
How we score →What do users say about Phidata?
What people actually say about Phidata — is it worth it?
We ran a structured research pass across product reviews, community discussions, and post-purchase forum threads to surface the patterns vendors won't publish themselves. Below: the recurring strengths, the hidden costs people mention most, and the cohort that consistently regrets adopting this tool.
Researched25 mentions across 2 sources (Hacker News, YouTube) · researched Aug 21, 2026.
Average across the 2 sources that answered — each source counts once, not each post.
- +Privacy-first: all data stays in your environment, no vendor leakage.
- +Unified API across 30+ model providers simplifies switching models.
- +Runs agents from other frameworks (Claude, LangGraph, DSPy) in one runtime.
- +AgentOS provides 50+ endpoints for runs, sessions, memory, knowledge, traces.
- +Built-in governance: JWT RBAC, per-session isolation, human-in-the-loop, audit logs.
- −Sparse community feedback makes it hard to gauge long-term reliability.
- −Hacker News report of issues with o1 reasoning models.
- −Steep learning curve for intermediate users, according to skill level.
- −Limited third-party integrations compared to more mature frameworks.
- −Control Plane (web console) may require self-hosting setup, adding complexity.
- • Pro plan includes only one live connection and four seats; additional seats or connections likely cost extra
- • Self-hosting runtime may require cloud infrastructure costs (AWS, GCP, etc.)
How we verified this
Every listed fact about Phidata — pricing, features, links, status — is re-read from the vendor's own pages by our verification pipeline and each change is logged with a date; the last pass ran on 8 Nov 2026. Analysis is drafted with AI models and checked against our editorial standards before publishing; see how we verify.
Verification history
We have re-verified Phidata 21 times since . Each pass re-reads the vendor's own pages and re-checks every listed field against that evidence; passes where nothing had changed are marked as such.
- — changed pricing page
- — changed description, pricing tiers, integrations, summary, features, our verdict
- — changed limitations, pricing page
- — changed SSL certificate
- — changed who should skip it, features, who it suits, summary, description, integrations, our verdict, pricing tiers
- — changed limitations, pricing page
Showing the 6 most recent of 21 verification passes.
Free to cite with attribution — this page re-verifies continuously.
How much does Phidata cost in 2026?
Phidata: Free to start; paid plans from $150/mo. Pricing last verified 8 Nov 2026.
Plans compared
Every published Phidata tier, its price as the vendor publishes it, who it fits, and what it adds over the tier below. The 12-month cost projection follows.
| Plan | Price | Billing | Who it's for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Free | Free | — | Solo developer or small team that can run a container and wants to build and serve agents at no cost with a local control plane.Adds: Starting tier: $0/mo with unlimited usage and retention, any framework, and every control plane feature — but local-only, not pointed at a live deployment. |
| Pro | $150/mo | monthly | Team of up to three operating one live production AgentOS deployment and wanting shared traces, sessions and basic RBAC.Adds: Adds a control plane pointed at a live AgentOS, 1 live connection, 3 team seats and basic team-level RBAC for $150/mo; seats $30/mo, connections $95/mo, SAML SSO $300/mo. |
| Enterprise | Custom | quote | Organization whose agents serve its own customers and needs end-user identity, roles, audit logs and per-resource access scoping.Adds: Adds end-user management, end-user audit logs, end-user identity and custom per-resource RBAC, plus Slack Connect support, a service SLA and security reviews. |
12-month cost
Project the real annual outlay, including the implied monthly cost when only an annual tier is published.
Vendor list price only. Add-on usage, seat overages, and contract minimums are surfaced under Hidden costs & gotchas.
Where the pricing makes sense
The company stage and team size where Phidata's pricing actually pencils out — and where peers do it cheaper.
At $150/mo for a control plane with one live AgentOS connection and 3 seats, Pro prices near a single mid-tier managed agent subscription and stays far below per-token agent platforms at high volume — but it assumes you supply the compute. Teams under three people can stay on the $0 Free tier indefinitely; teams past five people or two environments should model $30/mo seats and $95/mo connections before committing.
Who should pick Phidata?
Pick Phidata if you are Engineering teams that need traces, RBAC and audit logs on production multi-agent systems, Companies whose policy requires agent data and compute to stay in their own cloud or on-premise, Developers who want a framework-agnostic runtime that also serves LangGraph, DSPy or Claude SDK agents, Teams serving high-volume customer-facing agents without per-token, egress or retention metering.
Look elsewhere if you are Teams that need arbitrary custom graph workflows or complex state machines as the core abstraction, Buyers who want a fully managed hosted agent service with zero infrastructure ownership, Groups with no one comfortable operating a stateful service, its database and schema migrations, Organizations that need SAML SSO at the Pro price point — it's a $300/mo add-on.
Skip it if Skip Agno if you want a fully managed agent host with zero infrastructure to operate, or if your architecture depends on arbitrary custom graph workflows rather than agents, teams and workflows.
GeneratedReal-world workflow fit
Concrete scenarios for the personas Phidata actually fits — and what changes day-one when you adopt it.
You clone the agentos-docker template, run the setup-platform skill with a coding agent, and build a support agent with the Agno SDK using memory and knowledge against your own Postgres.
Outcome: You serve the agent over REST to your product and over MCP to Claude at $0/mo, watching sessions and traces in the local control plane.
Your team runs AgentOS on Kubernetes, points the Pro control plane at production, and gives support and sales agents separate sessions with basic role-based access control.
Outcome: Three seats watch traces, evaluations and approvals in one console for $150/mo; an extra engineer costs $30/mo and a second environment $95/mo.
You deploy AgentOS in your own VPC, use Enterprise to manage end-user identity, roles and audit logs, and scope access per resource with custom RBAC.
Outcome: Agents serve your customers with an audit trail that satisfies compliance, while data and compute never leave your cloud.
Use cases
- Serve customer-facing support agents that answer from product docs, order history and past resolutions.
- Build internal agent platforms your team operates together from a single control plane.
- Publish agents to the Claude and ChatGPT directories over MCP so users reach them in the tools they already use.
- Run Slack-native agents that handle workspace tasks with approval gates before anything ships.
- Fan a research question out to analyst agents and merge the answers into one brief.
- Automate invoice processing with an approval gate between extraction and posting.
- Enrich new signups with firmographics and route them to account owners.
- Improve knowledge search relevance with MMR and recency rerankers on your existing vector database.
Setup time & first value
How long it actually takes to get something useful out of Phidata — broken out by persona, not the marketing-page minute.
Solo developer: under an hour to a running agent if you clone a template and hand the setup prompt to Claude Code or Cursor. Platform engineer: half a day to a production AgentOS on Kubernetes with the Pro control plane attached. Enterprise: days to weeks, mostly security review and identity/RBAC scoping.
Switching to or from Phidata
How to bring data in from common predecessors and how to get it back out — written for the switcher, not the buyer.
- →From a hand-rolled FastAPI agent service: wrap existing agent code with the Agno SDK or run it as-is under AgentOS, then expose it over REST and MCP.
- →From LangGraph: keep your graphs and run them under AgentOS rather than rewriting them in Agno primitives.
- →From CrewAI: map crews to Agno teams, where specialists work one queue with shared context.
- →From a managed agent host: deploy the agentos-helm or agentos-aws template into your own cloud and move session storage to your database.
- ↗To a fully managed agent host: your agent logic is plain Python, so it ports; you give up AgentOS's REST/MCP serving, durable execution and control plane along with it.
- ↗To LangGraph: the SDK tracks 30+ model providers and your prompts and tool definitions transfer, but teams and workflows need re-expressing as graph nodes.
Integrations
Resources & guides
- Resourcedocs.agno.com
Welcome to Agno - Agno
Build, run, and manage your own agent platform.
- Resourcedocs.agno.com
Build Your First Agent - Agno
Build and run your first agent in 20 lines of code.
- Resourcephidata.com
Agno Blog: AI Agent news, insights, how-to guides, and more
Helpful link from phidata.com
- Resourcephidata.com
Agno Changelog: See what shipped
Helpful link from phidata.com
Tutorials & Learning
YouTube returned 6 videos for “Phidata”, and we withheld 6: 6 could not be judged, because “Phidata” is a single word that other videos use for other things. We are showing none, because we could not prove any of them are about Phidata.
Official links
What are the best Phidata alternatives?
The closest alternatives to Phidata we list are CrewAI, LangGraph and Hermes Desktop. Ranked by direct product-type match, not category overlap.
| Alternative | Pricing | Starts at | Last verified |
|---|---|---|---|
| CrewAI | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| LangGraph | Freemium | Pricing not published | — |
| Hermes Desktop | Free | Free | — |
Alternatives to Phidata
View allCrewAI
CrewAI is an enterprise multi-agent platform: visual builder plus a governed control plane for production agent workflows.
LangGraph
LangGraph is a low-level agent orchestration framework for building stateful, controllable AI agents as graphs.
Hermes Desktop
Free, open-source desktop GUI that runs the self-hosted Hermes Agent with a closed learning loop that writes its own skills
Tools that pair well with Phidata
Common stack mates teams adopt alongside Phidata, with the specific reason each pairing earns its keep.
CrewAI
CrewAI is an enterprise multi-agent platform: visual builder plus a governed control plane for production agent workflows.
LangGraph
LangGraph is a low-level agent orchestration framework for building stateful, controllable AI agents as graphs.
Hermes Desktop
Free, open-source desktop GUI that runs the self-hosted Hermes Agent with a closed learning loop that writes its own skills
Best-of guides
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