
Amp just launched a free Hobby tier. The coding agent company, spun out of Sourcegraph, makes a product in the same family as Claude Code and Codex — software that reads your code, edits it, runs commands and tests on its own. Now you can use it free, as long as you're working on your own computer and plugging in your own ChatGPT subscription or model API key. No monthly fee, no extra BYOK token charges.
That's a reversal. When Amp rolled out subscriptions in July, connecting your own ChatGPT subscription meant paying for the $20-a-month Megawatt tier at minimum. And even under BYOK — your key, your model — Amp tacked on token fees and capped usage. Both layers are gone. You still cover the ChatGPT subscription or the raw API model costs yourself.
Amp also sells a remote cloud machine called Orb, which spins up an isolated environment per task. Your code and dev tools live inside it, so the agent keeps grinding after you shut your laptop, and running several tasks at once gets a lot easier. Orb still bills by usage. Don't want to pay that either? Point Amp at your own machine instead.
BYOK is expanding too. Paying users can already hook up OpenRouter, Amazon Bedrock, Azure Foundry, Ollama Cloud and custom model endpoints. Everyone else gets access later.
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