Factory Droid 1.0: Coding Agent & Pricing

Factory Droid is a model-independent AI coding agent for desktop, terminal and SDK. Droid 1.0 shipped on Oct 29, 2026, and paid plans start at $20 a month.

Quick answer: Droid is the coding agent from Factory (factory.com). It plans, writes and checks code changes, and it runs as a desktop app for macOS and Windows, a terminal CLI and a Node SDK. You can pick the model yourself, including your own API keys, or let Factory Router choose. On October 29, 2026 Factory released Droid 1.0, its biggest harness update so far. There is no free plan: individual plans cost $20, $100 or $200 a month. We checked every price on the Factory pricing page on November 3, 2026.

What Factory Droid does

Factory calls Droid a harness: everything around the model, meaning the prompts, the tools, how tool results come back and the loop that runs it all. That matters because the same Droid works with Claude, GPT and open-weight models, so you are not locked into one lab. In practice you get:

• Desktop app, CLI and SDK: one agent you can use in a window, in the terminal or from your own Node code.
• Model choice: pick a model per task, bring your own API keys, or let Factory Router balance quality and cost.
• Cloud and local background agents: hand off longer jobs and keep working.
• Code review and automations: review comments on pull requests and recurring engineering chores on autopilot.
• Droid Computers: Factory-managed cloud machines for remote Droids on the Plus plan and above.

What changed in Droid 1.0

The headline change is programmatic tool calling, now on by default. Instead of calling tools one at a time and pasting every result into its context, the model writes a short JavaScript program (Factory’s Script tool) that runs many tool calls in a sandbox and returns only the printed output. One model request can now drive hundreds of tool calls.

• Fewer round trips: in Factory’s own example, a unit-test fix took 5 model calls instead of 10 and finished in 41.6 seconds instead of 56.8.
• Benchmark claims: on Terminal-Bench 4, Factory reports 65.2% with Claude Opus 5.5 at $4.73 per passed task, ahead of Cursor and OpenCode (62.1%), Devin (59.6%) and Claude Code (57.6%). With GPT-6.1 Sol it reports 57.6% versus 54.0% for Codex.
• Caveat: these are Factory’s own runs, not an independent test, and Factory’s figures show Codex is still faster per passed task with GPT-6.1 Sol.

If you’re still choosing between coding agents, our best AI agents for coding guide compares the main options, and how to build an AI agent explains what a harness actually does.

Factory Droid Pricing (2026)

Plan	Price	Usage	Key extras
Pro	$20 a month	Standard usage with rolling rate limits	Factory App, Droid CLI and SDK, cloud and local background agents
Plus	$100 a month	About 5x Pro	Droid Computers for remote Droids
Max	$200 a month	About 10x Pro	Early access to new features
Teams	$60 a month per team plus $40 per seat	Pro features for the team	Up to 10 seats, shared billing
Business and Enterprise	Contact sales	Custom limits	SSO, SAML/SCIM, zero data retention, on-premise options

How usage works, per Factory’s plan docs: each plan has three rolling limits (5-hour, 7-day and 30-day). Standard usage is used first. After that, Droid Core, a pool of open-weight models with its own limits, keeps you going at no extra cost. Extra usage is prepaid credit from $10 that doesn’t expire. Bringing your own API keys is free up to an allowance on every individual plan.

Is Factory Droid free? No. There is no free plan on the pricing page, so the cheapest way in is Pro at $20 a month.

Who Factory Droid is for

Droid fits developers and teams who want one agent across several models instead of a different tool per lab, and enterprises that need SSO, audit logs or on-premise deployment. If you only use Claude or only use ChatGPT, the native agent bundled with that subscription may be cheaper. Teams worried about letting agents loose on real systems should read are AI agents safe first.

Limitations

• No free tier: you need at least Pro at $20 a month.
• Rate limits: heavy sessions can hit the 5-hour window, and Missions pause when a limit is reached.
• Self-reported benchmarks: the Droid 1.0 numbers come from Factory’s own testing.
• Name confusion: searches for factory droid also return Star Wars droids and other products called Droid.

Factory Droid is a strong pick if you want one coding agent that isn’t tied to a single AI lab, and Droid 1.0’s script mode is a real step toward cheaper long tasks.

Start on Pro at $20 a month. Move to Plus only if you keep hitting the rolling limits or need Droid Computers.