How much does Frends cost in 2026?

Frends doesn't print a tier price on its own pricing page, but it isn't hiding one either. Here is every public figure side by side, with where each came from.

Pricing page read 14 September 2026 (limits re-read 15 September); estimator code read, not run, 14 September; Azure catalog read 15 September 2026.

Vendor-supplied to AutomationAtlas, 11 August 2026

The vendor figures name company sizes, not tiers, so don't read them across into the table above.

Processes set the bill; runs mostly don't

Frends counts unique Processes, APIs and Pass-through APIs in use outside the Development Agent Group in the Development Environment on the last day of each month, and a Process deployed to Development, Test and Production counts once. Executions are "not a hard-limitation": go over and Frends recommends a bigger tier rather than blocking you. For scale, one Process polling every five seconds runs about 526,000 times a month, more than Growth's whole 0.5M allowance by itself. The Growth process cap depends on which Frends document you read: 25 on the pricing page (14 September 2026), 50 in Growth v1.0.1 and in archived pricing-page copies from 15 June and 29 August, and 75 on the Marketplace Growth plan. Get the governing number written into your order.

The marketplace meter can double Growth

Frends' Azure Marketplace plans charge per process on top of the base fee, and every meter read on 14 September 2026 declares an included quantity of 0. Growth and Enterprise bands step down from EUR 31.40913 a process (1-25) to 20.93942 (26-100), 15.22867 (101-500) and 12.37329 (501-1,000); Business runs EUR 30, 20, 15 and 12. Here's our illustration, reading the meters at face value as monthly charges. A 25-process Growth estate sits wholly in the first band, so it adds EUR 785.23 to the EUR 790 fee: EUR 1,575.23 a month, double the headline. At 40 processes the catalog doesn't say whether bands are graduated or volume-priced, so Growth lands between EUR 1,627.58 and EUR 1,889.32, and Business between EUR 2,800 and EUR 3,050. On the marketplace, at least, "unlimited processes" means no cap rather than no charge. Marketplace list prices are not a direct contract, so get a quote at your process count.

AI credits and the trial are side issues

One Frends Credit costs EUR 0.01 and covers roughly 3,000 to 6,000 tokens depending on the model, which works out at about EUR 1.67 to EUR 3.33 per million tokens. Business and Enterprise include 1,000 credits a month, EUR 10 of AI; Frends' own example of 1,000 AI-sorted support emails a day uses about 3,600 credits, or EUR 36 a month. Growth's 100 credits are "limited to test usages" (Growth v1.0.1). On trials, General Terms v2.0 (9 January 2026) set 30 days "unless otherwise agreed", but on 15 September 2026 frends.com/pricing had no trial link and the Azure record read "hasFreeTrials": false, while the portal login page offered "Sign up". Ask for a trial; don't expect a button.

Floors, currency and the yearly rise

General Terms v2.0, which an Order Form overrides where they differ, require euro payment unless otherwise agreed in writing and raise fees every anniversary by the higher of 6% or the euro-area HICP increase. Six percent is a floor, not a forecast, so it compounds in a zero-inflation year too: a EUR 2,000 monthly fee becomes EUR 2,120 in year two and EUR 2,247.20 in year three, about EUR 4,400 more over three years than a flat price. At the bottom of the range, no live Finland Marketplace plan costs less than EUR 790 a month (15 September 2026), and the sources checked show no direct-contract price.

Against MuleSoft's $2,000 starting point

MuleSoft's pricing page, read 15 September 2026, says packages "start at $2,000 per month, billed annually", which means at least $24,000 for the year, with Mule Credits whose rate varies by usage type; Pre-Commit carries a "$50K minimum annual commitment". Frends' marketplace plans run on one-month, auto-renewing terms. The currencies and units differ, so we give no conversion. The honest comparison is both vendors pricing the same written workload.

Editor's Note: The number I'd negotiate first in a Frends contract isn't the monthly fee; it's the escalator. Frends' current General Terms raise fees by at least 6% on every anniversary, whatever inflation does. General Terms v1.0.6, dated April 2025, made Frends give 60 days' written notice of a price change and let the customer terminate if an increase topped 10% in a year; by v1.1 that September, the 6%-or-HICP formula had replaced it. Because an Order Form overrides the General Terms, asking for a cap, or that walk-away right back, isn't exotic: it's Frends' own former wording. The caveat: I've read published terms, not a signed order form, and nothing I read says whether the clause applies to Azure Marketplace purchases. — Rafal Fila, ShadowGen