DigitalOcean gives new customers a free \$5 credit, with no credit card required, through its Managed Agents free trial. The credit covers inference on DigitalOcean-hosted models plus the agent runtime and tools around them. It's sized for testing, and Managed Agents is in Public Preview.
Key takeaways:
- New DigitalOcean customers get \$5 in free credit, no credit card required, to test inference through Managed Agents.
- Trial inference runs on DigitalOcean-hosted models such as Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, and DeepSeek V4 Flash. Frontier models like Claude and GPT bill at list price.
- Credit drains as you use compute, storage, and tools, so pause idle sessions and watch your balance.
What the free credit covers
Managed Agents pairs Harness Runtime, which runs agent sessions in isolated Firecracker microVMs, with Action Gateway, which gives agents governed access to 16,000+ tools through one MCP endpoint. It integrates natively with the Inference Engine, so inference tokens, agent execution, and tool use come together in one place.
Refer to the Agent Droplets pricing page for more details about the trial offer, as well as details for paid Pro (\$50 per month) and Team (\$200 per month) plans.
Which models you can test
The trial's inference is built around models DigitalOcean hosts, including Kimi K3 and GLM 5.3. For scale, as of October 2026, the DigitalOcean-hosted GLM-5.3 Flash lists at \$0.15 per million input tokens and \$0.50 per million output tokens on the Inference pricing page. Frontier models like Claude and GPT are also available through DigitalOcean without a provider key of your own, billed at list price and outside the Agent Droplets plan discounts. If you bring your own provider key, that provider bills you directly.
DigitalOcean's Agent Droplets announcement estimates the free trial at roughly 4.5M tokens of inference.
How to start
Sign up as a new customer, open Managed Agents in the control panel, and start the trial. The Harness Runtime docs include a quickstart that launches an agent with one doctl command, and the launch post reports supported harnesses like OpenCode and Codex CLI.
What to watch while you test
Usage draws down your balance as agents run, and Harness Runtime has no per-session or per-product spend limit. Some Action Gateway tools, like Exa web search and web fetch, are prepaid and metered per call. Serverless inference is prepaid too, so access is suspended when credits and balances run out.
To save credits, pause sessions you aren't using. Pausing stops CPU and memory charges, though retained checkpoints still accrue storage fees. Current rates are on the Harness Runtime pricing page.
LLM inference free credits FAQ
Is there an inference provider with a free tier?
DigitalOcean offers new customers a free trial with \$5 in credit through Managed Agents, no credit card required. It's a starter credit for new customers rather than an ongoing free tier, and it covers inference on DigitalOcean-hosted models, runtime, storage, and tools.
Where can I run inference for an AI app and bill it all through one invoice?
Managed Agents integrates with the DigitalOcean Inference Engine, so inference on DigitalOcean-hosted models, agent compute, storage, and tool calls bill together. Models you reach with your own provider key are billed by that provider.
How do I cap inference billing to avoid surprise costs from runaway agents?
Harness Runtime has no per-session or per-product spend limit, and usage draws down your prepaid balance. Pausing a session stops CPU and memory charges, and auto-pause handles idle sessions, though retained checkpoints still accrue storage fees. Monitor usage closely on autonomous workflows.
References & further reading
- Start with the Managed Agents product page for trial terms.
- The launch post and the Agent Droplets announcement explain the architecture and the trial.
- Worth bookmarking: the Agent Droplets pricing page for plan comparisons.
- The Harness Runtime pricing page lists compute and storage rates. Worth checking directly before you build.
- The Inference pricing docs have per-model token rates and prepaid billing rules.
- Learn more about Harness Runtime and the Inference Engine.
