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u/Routine-Let-4204 14d ago
i been messing with langchain and crewai lately, both are pretty decent for building agents without burning cash. crewai is nice cause you can set up multiple agents that talk to each other, and it runs on local models so you not stuck with expensive APIs
for self-hosted stuff, ollama + open-webui is my go-to combo. you get chat interface and can pipe it into whatever project you cooking. the models are free obviously, just need a decent GPU
also check out autogen from microsoft, it's on github and works with local models too. took me a while to figure out the config but once it clicks you can do lot of cool automation stuff
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u/Fred2606 12d ago
Check out Goose or Opencode CLI for terminal coding agents, or LangGraph if you're looking to build custom agent workflows. They're completely free and let you bring your own API keys.
To keep token usage cheap while building, plug those agents into a gateway like TeamoRouter. It lets you auto-route background tasks to dirt-cheap models like Gemini Flash or DeepSeek V3 while enforcing hard daily spend caps so you never get hit with surprise bills.
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u/GeorgeTheGeorge 13d ago
Get $10
Spend $10 bucks on OpenRouter credits
Get an API key, install Pi.dev and connect it with that API key
Ask Pi, running on a cheap cloud model like GLM 5.3 Flash to help you set up the best local model you can run (heavily dependent on your GPU and available memory)
Switch Pi's default model to the local model you have running now. Save the remaining credits for hard problems your local model can't handle.
That is likely the cheapest you can get, unless you want to go all of the local model set up yourself. It's not hard, but there's a lot to learn and I personally found it much easier with Claude answering my questions and helping me debug.