Lindy AI Alternatives in 2026: Pick by Where the Work Should Live

The best Lindy AI alternative depends on where you want the work to happen. Dust keeps agents in a company workspace and in Slack, with free seats for occasional users. Gumloop and n8n are for people who want to build agents and see how they run. Poke lives in your text messages, and Merlin, which we make, is a Mac app for one person's routines.

Lindy is less a workflow tool than a colleague you message, and that shapes the search. People leave because every colleague needs a seat, or because they wanted a builder or something private to one person. What you'd give up comes first here, then the options, sorted by where they sit in your day.

What Lindy does well

Lindy's strength is that it works from the first message, without a builder. Lindy's site calls it an AI employee, and its docs list the ways in: Slack DMs and channels, iMessage, email, meetings and a Chrome extension. Slack is optional, because anyone can use Lindy by phone or email instead.

• Phone calls. Lindy has its own number. It can call people for you, navigate phone menus, wait on hold, leave voicemail and answer incoming calls. Merlin doesn't make phone calls at all.
• Routines in plain English. A Lindy routine is a trigger, a prompt and a destination. Triggers include schedules, email, Slack messages, calendar events and meetings ending, and a Smart Filter narrows them in ordinary words.
• Meetings. Lindy joins Google Meet, Zoom and Microsoft Teams as a visible participant and keeps a shared library with folder permissions.
• Reach and paperwork. The pricing page lists 1,500+ integrations plus MCP (a standard way to connect AI tools to apps). Lindy's security page lists SOC 2, GDPR, HIPAA and PIPEDA, and says your data doesn't train AI models. A signed HIPAA agreement comes with Enterprise.
• Approvals. The pricing page says actions with outside impact, such as sending an email or updating a ticket, wait for approval, and in shared Slack threads you choose which changes Lindy makes on its own.

A team that runs on Slack, needs real phone calls and has a compliance review to pass may already have the right tool, and can stop reading here.

How much Lindy costs in 2026

Lindy's Team plan costs $49.99 per active user a month, with 5,000 credits per user pooled across the workspace, according to Lindy's pricing page. New accounts get $50 in free credits, no card needed, which last 7 days. The page shows monthly prices only. Enterprise is custom.

Three details on that page matter more than the headline. Anyone who uses Lindy takes a seat, including someone who only @mentions it in Slack. Monthly credits don't roll over, though top-ups at $10 per 1,000 credits stay until used. And when the pool runs out, credit-using work pauses until an admin adds more, so there's no surprise bill but your routines can stop.

Credits run at $0.01 each on base plans. Lindy puts everyday asks at 2 to 250 credits and deep work at 250 to 1,000, and phone calls start at 25 credits a minute. A team of five pays $249.95 a month for a 25,000-credit pool. A new phone number also carries a monthly fee.

Why switch from Lindy to an alternative?

People usually want a Lindy alternative because of per-user billing, unpredictable credit use, or a need Lindy doesn't aim at, such as self-hosting or building agents by hand. Most articles on this search come from Lindy's competitors, this one included, so weigh them accordingly.

• The seat rule. Five people who each ask a question a week cost the same as five heavy users. Admins can cap a teammate's credits, but the seat is still billed.
• Forecasting credits. A range of 2 to 250 credits for an everyday ask is hard to budget before you've watched your own usage for a month.
• Hosting. Lindy's own comparison says it has no self-hosted option.
• Tool fit. New Slack installs need a paid Slack plan, messaging Lindy in Microsoft Teams is listed as coming soon, and the Chrome extension works in Gmail but not yet Outlook.
• Team-sized when you're one person. Lindy's homepage pitches an AI employee for your whole team. Someone who wants a personal assistant may prefer something smaller.

If an older list recommends Relay.app, skip that one: its site says it shut down in September 2026 and deleted all accounts.

Lindy and five alternatives side by side

Credits aren't a shared currency. A Lindy credit, a Dust credit and a Merlin credit each buy different amounts of work, so run the same real task on any two tools before you compare allowances.

Dust: agents in a company workspace, with free seats

Dust is the closest match for a company that wants shared AI agents without paying full price for everyone. Dust's pricing page offers three seat types on its Business plan, for teams of up to 100: Free with 500 lifetime credits, Pro at €30 a month or €24 billed yearly with 8,000 credits, and Max at €150 or €120 billed yearly with 40,000 credits. Prices exclude VAT. The seats that use little can stay free, which is the direct answer to Lindy's seat rule, as long as those 500 credits last them.

Members call agents by mentioning @Dust in Slack, and schedules run them on a timetable you describe in plain language. Dust's homepage lists 70+ connectors. Where Lindy is an assistant you start messaging, Dust is aimed at people who build and run agents for their teams, so expect someone to own that work.

Gumloop: build the agent yourself

Gumloop suits teams that want to design their own agents and pay by usage. Gumloop's site calls it a multiplayer agent builder: you describe the work, connect company apps and run it on triggers, with @mentions in Slack as one way in.

Gumloop's credits guide is unusually open about the meter. Pro is $37 a month with 20,000 credits, and each credit is worth $0.005. A run adds up model use, tool calls and compute time, plus an 8% orchestration fee. Bring your own model key and eligible model calls cost no credits, while that fee doubles to 16%. Its docs don't explain how team size affects the price, so check the pricing page before you plan around it.

n8n: run it on your own servers

n8n is the option here for teams that need the work inside their own environment. n8n's homepage describes a visual builder that lets you drop into code, 500+ native integrations, deployment on-prem or with Docker, and human approval steps.

n8n's pricing page counts executions, and an execution is one run of a whole workflow, whatever its size. With annual billing, Starter costs €20 a month for 2.5K executions and Pro costs €50 for 10K. The self-hosted Community Edition is free on GitHub. n8n isn't a colleague you message, though. Someone has to design each workflow and keep it running, so it fits a team with a technical person who wants that job.

Poke: a personal assistant in your texts

Poke is the nearest thing to Lindy's texting experience for one person, without a workspace around it. You reach it through Messages, WhatsApp or Telegram, it connects to apps including Gmail, Google Calendar, Outlook and Notion, and you set reminders or start tasks by text or voice message.

Poke's pricing page shows a no-card free tier, Pro at $19 a month with background automations, and Ultra at $199 a month. Calls work differently from Lindy's: Poke's FAQ describes a human operator who can phone on your behalf, included with Ultra.

Merlin: personal routines from a Mac

We make Merlin, so discount our enthusiasm here. It's a Mac app for one person, and it won't stand in for a shared Slack teammate. Its plans are per account, with no team workspace or pooled credits, which also means no seat to buy for anyone else.

A routine can fire at a set time, when Gmail or Google Calendar changes, when a webhook arrives or when you press Run now, and you build them by describing them in chat, then testing before you activate. Daily Digest, Inbox Watcher and Meeting Brief come built in. Connected apps such as Slack, Notion and Linear can be a routine's actions, and a custom MCP server covers apps outside that list. Beyond routines, Merlin keeps track of your contacts and runs errands in its own browser, stopping before it pays or submits anything it can't take back. Meetings record on your Mac, with transcription on paid plans.

Several gaps could rule Merlin out. You need a Mac, and setup needs both Gmail and Google Calendar. It makes no phone calls and has no texting channel. A Slack message can't start a routine, and schedules run at most every 15 minutes. Paid plans cap you at 20 active routines. And where Lindy's pricing page says outside actions wait for approval, a Merlin routine runs unattended: a Slack post from a live run goes out without asking you, though the same request in chat waits for your approval first.

On Merlin's pricing page, the free plan refills to 5,000 credits each month and holds two saved routines. The Pro plan gives 25,000 monthly credits for $29 by the month, or $278 billed yearly.

How to choose

• Slack is home, and only some people use the agent much: Dust, with free seats for light users.
• You want to design agents and watch the costs line by line: Gumloop.
• Data has to stay on your servers, and you have someone technical: n8n.
• You need the agent to make and take phone calls: stay on Lindy.
• You need a signed HIPAA agreement: Lindy's Enterprise plan is a documented route. Ask any other vendor directly.
• You're one person who wants help by text from anywhere: Poke.
• You work alone from a Mac, mostly on your inbox, meetings and people: Merlin. If your main need is email, our Fyxer comparison covers tools built only for that, and our AI note taker guide does the same for meetings.
• You aren't sure what to hand over yet: start with one job, as in our guide to what to delegate to an AI chief of staff, and test it on Lindy's free credits first.

Moving off Lindy

Leaving Lindy mostly means rewriting your routines elsewhere and closing out seats and any phone number. Lindy's routine format makes the first part easier, since each one comes down to three things you can copy out.

1. List each routine's trigger, prompt and destination, and note which ones actually run. Lindy's usage settings show who spends the credits.
2. Rebuild the busiest routine first, and test it where it can't reach a customer.
3. Turn the Lindy routine off when the new one goes live, so nothing runs twice. Lindy says this stops a routine without removing it.
4. If you bought a number, release it. Pausing the line doesn't stop the monthly fee.
5. Time your seat changes. A removed seat stays active through the paid cycle, with no mid-cycle proration, and downgrades wait until the term ends.