CrewAI
Framework for orchestrating autonomous AI agents
The Lens
By Erik Loyd, SaaS CEO and former COO/CFO of an AWS Premier Partner.
Updated Oct 2026
CrewAI builds a team of AI agents in Python. Each agent gets a role, a goal and tools, and a Crew passes tasks between them, in order or under a manager agent. Flows cover the opposite case: event-driven, step-by-step control when you don't want agents improvising. The framework is MIT and free.
Setup is uv tool install crewai, then crewai create crew scaffolds a project where agents live in JSONC files. It's a standalone framework, not a LangChain wrapper. There's no server to run. Agents call OpenAI by default, and local models work through Ollama.
The paid side is CrewAI AMP, a hosted platform with a visual editor, tracing and deployment. The free Basic plan gives you 50 workflow executions a month. Past that it's Enterprise, custom pricing only, which adds SSO, RBAC and deployment in your own VPC. No self-serve middle tier. Solo and small teams: free framework. Larger teams: Enterprise, or deploy it yourself.
The catch: multi-agent setups multiply LLM calls and are hard to debug. Anonymous telemetry is on by default. And in March 2026 CERT/CC disclosed four flaws, including prompt injection to code execution via the Code Interpreter Tool, which CrewAI then removed.
Free vs Self-Hosted vs Paid
open coreFree: The framework is MIT with nothing gated: Agents, Tasks, Crews (sequential or hierarchical process), Flows, tools, memory and MCP support. CrewAI AMP Basic is also free: the Studio visual editor and AI copilot, GitHub integration, 2 automations and 50 workflow executions a month (hard cap, no overage), tracing, OpenTelemetry export and community support, hosted on CrewAI cloud only.
Self-hosted: The framework runs anywhere Python 3.10 to 3.13 runs; you pay only your model provider. There is no server component unless you build one. Running the AMP control plane in your own VPC or on your own infrastructure is Enterprise only.
Paid: AMP Enterprise is custom priced with no published rate. It adds enterprise connectors, executions sized to your workflows with flexible overage, SSO (Microsoft Entra, Okta), role-based access control, dedicated VPC or on-prem deployment, dedicated and on-site support, and a 45-day onboarding. There is no self-serve paid tier between Free and Enterprise. LLM API costs are always separate.
The framework is free under MIT. Hosted AMP is free up to 50 workflow executions a month, then jumps straight to custom-priced Enterprise with no self-serve tier in between.
What to do by team size
- Solo
- free; uv tool install crewai and build locally
- Small team
- free framework; the AMP Basic plan covers 50 hosted executions a month
- Medium team
- free framework on your own infrastructure, since hosted AMP past 50 executions means an Enterprise contract
- Large team
- AMP Enterprise for SSO, RBAC and VPC or on-prem deployment, custom pricing
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