Trae — AI Tool Review, Features & Pricing

About Trae

AI-powered IDE by ByteDance built on VS Code. Built-in models as of August 2026 include GPT-5.4, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, ByteDance's Seed-2.1-Turbo, Kimi K2.5, MiniMax M3, and MiniMax M2.7, with custom models addable via API key (Anthropic, xAI, and 30+ other providers). SOLO mode runs fully autonomous builds; also ships agents, skills, hooks, MCP support, and Figma-to-code.

It belongs to the development category (subcategory: ai-coding) within the AI Workflows tool directory.

Trae offers a freemium model with a free tier and paid upgrades.

Editorial Review: Trae scores 7.8/10

Our editors scored Trae 7.8 out of 10 overall (3.9 out of 5 stars), averaged across 5 independently rated dimensions.

Pros of Trae

• Free tier includes frontier models that rivals charge for
• Full VS Code-style IDE with a built-in agent (“Builder”) mode
• Low barrier to entry — free plan, with paid tiers starting at $3/month

Cons of Trae

• Data-handling concerns for some teams given its ByteDance ownership
• Less mature and stable than Cursor; occasional rough edges
• Free-tier model access and limits can shift without notice

When to use Trae

• Developers wanting a Cursor-like IDE without the subscription
• Hobby and side projects where cost matters most
• Trying agent-driven coding on frontier models for free

The editor's take on Trae

Trae is ByteDance’s AI IDE — a VS Code-style editor with completions and a “Builder” agent, and its free tier still hands you frontier models at no charge. That makes it the budget answer to Cursor, and the value is genuine, though as of August 2026 heavier use moves you onto paid plans starting at $3/month. The tradeoffs are maturity (it is less polished and stable) and the data-governance questions that come with its ownership, which matter more for company code than side projects.

Last evaluated June 2026 by the AI Workflows editorial desk.

Pricing & Plans

• Pricing model: Freemium
• Plan details: Free plan at $0/month includes $3 of monthly usage, 5,000 autocompletions per month, and standard queue priority. Paid plans as of August 2026 bill monthly at Lite $3, Pro $10, Pro+ $30, and Ultra $100, raising the included usage to $5 / $20 / $90 / $400 and adding unlimited autocompletion and fast queue priority. Annual billing runs $27 / $90 / $270 / $900.

Available Models in Trae

• GPT-5.4
• Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview
• Gemini 3 Flash Preview
• Seed-2.1-Turbo
• Kimi K2.5
• MiniMax M3
• MiniMax M2.7

Key Capabilities

• code-generation
• code-completion
• agent-mode
• codebase-chat
• ide
• multi-model

Tags & Keywords

ai-coding, ide, free, bytedance, vscode-fork, solo-mode, multi-model, mcp

How to access Trae

Visit the official Trae website: https://trae.ai.

Find more AI tools like Trae on our AI Tools Directory, explore complete AI Workflows that combine multiple tools, or read in-depth reviews on our AI Blog.

Workflows using Trae

Trae is one of the recommended tools in these step-by-step AI workflows:

• App Development Workflow — Build a functional web or mobile app using natural language and vibe coding.

Alternatives to Trae

If Trae does not fit your use case, these alternative AI tools in the same category may be worth comparing:

• Cursor — AI-native code editor (VS Code fork) with deep editor integration, multi-agent orchestration, and Agent Mode for autonomous cod...
• GitHub Copilot — AI pair programmer by GitHub/Microsoft with code completions, chat-based coding assistance, and a full coding agent. GPT-5.5, C...
• Augment Code — AI coding assistant with deep codebase understanding via its Context Engine. Indexes entire repositories semantically to provid...
• Devin Desktop — AI-native IDE by Cognition, rebranded from Windsurf on June 2, 2026. Devin Local — a ground-up Rust rewrite of the Cascade agen...