# Orq.ai review (2026): is the free plan enough? > AI gateway with observability, governance and managed agents Checked Nov 13, 2026 · graded Nov 13, 2026 by ToolGPA. Orq.ai is a European AI platform whose main product is a gateway that routes requests to many model providers and MCP tools under shared policies, budgets and logging. It also offers managed agents, evaluation tools and an AI governance layer, plus a Software Factory in early access that uses agents to plan, build and test software. - **Category:** AI Agents - **Made by:** Orq.ai - **Website:** https://orq.ai - **Runs on:** Web - **Who should skip it:** Watch out: using Orq.ai's own keys adds a 4.5% platform fee on model traffic. - **Facts last checked:** Nov 13, 2026 ## Pricing As of Nov 13, 2026, Orq.ai has a free plan, and paid plans start at €35 per extra seat / month beyond the 10 included, plus usage. - **Pricing model:** Free plan - **Free plan:** Pay-as-you-go has no platform fee: 10 AI Studio seats, 100k spans, 5 GB processed data and 500 agent runs a month included. - **Free trial:** None listed. | Plan | Price | What you get | | --- | --- | --- | | Pay-as-you-go | €0 | Unlimited requests with your own provider keys; 4.5% fee on credits when using Orq.ai's keys. Extra spans, data, seats and agent runs are metered. | | Enterprise | Custom | Adds AI governance, audit logs, on-prem and VPC options, SOC 2 report, custom DPA, uptime SLA and Slack or Teams support. | Read from https://orq.ai/pricing on Nov 13, 2026. Prices change, so confirm with Orq.ai before buying. ## Ways to pay less - **Startup, academic, NGO and open-source discounts** (Startups): The pay-as-you-go plan notes discounts for startups, academic users, NGOs and open-source projects; terms are not shown on the page. Source: https://orq.ai/pricing ## Key features - **AI Gateway:** One OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible API for 500+ models from 30+ providers, with fallbacks, retries, caching and load balancing. - **MCP Gateway:** Routes calls to remote MCP servers under the same policies as model traffic, and traces each tool call. - **Observability:** Every request becomes a trace with cost, tokens, latency and payloads, with OpenTelemetry ingestion and alerts. - **Managed agents:** An agent runtime with sub-agents, tools, knowledge bases, memory stores, prompt management, evaluators and scheduled runs. - **Governance and guardrails:** Budgets, PII redaction, guardrail rules and model restrictions, with audit logs, EU hosting and EU AI Act tooling on the higher tier. ## Good for - Teams routing several LLM providers through one governed endpoint - European companies that want EU-hosted AI infrastructure - Engineering groups that need traces and budgets across agents ## Worth knowing - Prices are shown in euros. Model traffic is billed at provider rates, and the platform adds a 4.5% fee when you use Orq.ai's keys. - Beyond the included amounts: €7 per 100k spans, €3 per GB processed, €0.01 per agent run with tools, €35 per AI Studio seat. - SSO, SAML or OIDC and fine-grained RBAC are a €300 a month Teams add-on, and included on Enterprise. - Pay-as-you-go keeps data for 30 days with a 100 requests per minute rate limit. ## ToolGPA grades **GPA: 2.6 out of 4**, graded Nov 13, 2026. Orq.ai puts 500+ models and MCP tools behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint, with logging and guardrails. Pay-as-you-go has no platform fee, but it adds a 4.5% fee on its own keys, charges for seats and usage past the caps, and puts SSO on a €300 add-on. - **Value for money: B.** Pay-as-you-go carries no platform fee, though extra seats are €35 each and usage is billed past the included amounts. Prices are in euros. - **Free plan and trial: B.** 10 seats, 100k spans, 5 GB and 500 agent runs a month are included, with 30-day retention and 100 requests a minute. Enough for one developer, tight for a product. - **Features: C.** Gateway, MCP gateway, observability, agents and guardrails. SSO and fine-grained roles cost €300 a month extra on the self-serve plan. - **Ease of use: C.** No store rating on record. It is a developer service: you wire in API keys and point your code at the endpoint. - **Platforms and integrations: B.** Web console and an API, with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex and Okta listed. No desktop or phone app. These are ToolGPA's own grades. Graded from this listing, whose facts were read from Orq.ai's own pages on 13 November 2026. Not based on using the product, and shorter than our full reviews. ## Where it stands among AI agents - Orq.ai's GPA of 2.6 is higher than 139 of the 178 other AI agents we grade, and level with 20. - It stands best on free plan and trial (B, above 144 of 178) and worst on features (C, above 2). - Its paid plans start at about $39.10 a month for each person, against a middle price of $25 for the category: 66 of the 98 others that charge start lower. - On features, ease of use and platforms it scores 2.3 out of 4. 29 tools score higher and cost less. The category's chart of price against score: https://toolgpa.com/charts/ai-agents ## Keep it, or make your own? **Keep it.** To replace Orq.ai you would be making an AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. That is not a weekend's work, with an AI app builder or without one. It is one of the better ones too: its GPA of 2.6 is higher than 139 of the 178 other AI agents we grade. It costs $469.22 a year. - You could make: Reports: an app builder makes this well. - You could not: An AI agent, with the models and the safeguards behind it. - You could not: It is priced for each person, which means accounts and billing for a team. - You could not: It plugs into other products, OpenAI, Anthropic and Google among them, and has an API. - You could not: What a company asks for before it lets staff use something: audit logs. A judgement by ToolGPA from this listing, by rules that are the same for every tool. Nothing was built to test it. ## Works with OpenAI, Anthropic, Google, Mistral, Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, Okta **Tags:** AI agents, Public API, AI features, Reports ## Alternatives - [Vellum](https://toolgpa.com/tools/vellum-ai): Personal AI assistant with long-term memory that acts across apps. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/orq-ai-vs-vellum-ai) - [Agenta](https://toolgpa.com/tools/agenta): Open-source workspace for building team AI agents and automations. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/agenta-vs-orq-ai) - [LangGraph](https://toolgpa.com/tools/langgraph): Open-source framework for building controllable AI agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/langgraph-vs-orq-ai) - [Dify](https://toolgpa.com/tools/dify): Open-source platform for building AI agents and agentic workflows. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/dify-vs-orq-ai) - [AgentOps](https://toolgpa.com/tools/agentops): Tracing, debugging and cost tracking for AI agents. [Compare](https://toolgpa.com/compare/agentops-vs-orq-ai) ## Sources The prices, plans, platforms and features above were read from these pages on Nov 13, 2026: - https://orq.ai/pricing - https://orq.ai Page: https://toolgpa.com/tools/orq-ai Listed by ToolGPA (toolgpa.com).