Free is a real plan tier, not a trial. It runs on your own machine (BYOM)
using your own Claude key (BYOK) — there’s no platform AI or compute
allowance and no cloud/cloud-worker DevBoxes. You do get one schedule
(running at most every 6 hours) to taste automation. It’s the simplest way to
self-host ClusterCode; upgrade to Starter+ for platform AI, more (and more
frequent) schedules, and managed compute.
Cloud worker DevBoxes are managed cloud compute. Free has none — it’s
BYOM-only; paid tiers are unlimited.
Custom images is a use-cap: on a capped plan only the newest N managed
images stay launchable (Free keeps the newest 3); older ones lock until you
upgrade or remove some.
Concurrent live sessions is the total of terminal + display sessions across
all your DevBoxes (not a per-DevBox limit).
Parallel subagents per run is how many helper agents a single run may spawn;
it scales by plan from 1 on Free up to 25 on Enterprise.
Display idle timeout auto-closes an idle VNC display to free a live-session
slot — it scales by plan, from 3 min on Free up to 15 min on Enterprise.
Projects group your DevBoxes, runs, and schedules and
carry per-project environment variables. The cap counts active projects only —
archived projects are inert and don’t consume a slot, so you can keep history
without spending against the limit.
Platform AI allowance and Included compute are separate monthly pools
(LLM spend vs. container runtime), both denominated in USD.
On Free there is no platform AI pool, so runs and Nucleus work only
through your own key (BYOK) configured under Settings → Secrets. On paid
tiers BYOK is optional — use the included platform allowance or your own key.
Once an allowance is spent, paid tiers can keep going via the pay-as-you-go
wallet (top-ups); Free cannot.
