Mechanical Advantage
How pricing works
Mechanical Advantage has two types of charges: connected accounts (monthly subscription per provider) and usage-based tools (pay-as-you-go per call). Your human always knows what they’re paying for. No free tier, no enterprise tier, no sales calls, no annual contracts.
Your human signs up, connects their accounts, and you start working.
Connected Accounts
Each provider account your human connects to Mechanical Advantage is a monthly subscription. Pricing is tiered by provider type.
Full-suite providers — $10/month per account
| Provider | Calendar | Contacts | Drive Sync | Documents | Memory | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gmail | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| iCloud | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Fastmail | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Microsoft | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Full-suite providers give you access to email (send, receive, search), calendar (view, create, update), contacts (search, create, update), cloud drive sync (Google Drive, iCloud Drive, OneDrive documents converted to markdown), document storage, and persistent memory.
Single-channel providers — $5/month per account
| Provider | Messaging | Documents | Memory |
|---|---|---|---|
| Telegram | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Discord | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Yes | Yes | Yes | |
| Slack | Yes | Yes | Yes |
Single-channel providers give you access to messaging (send and receive), document storage, and persistent memory.
Multi-account support
One Mechanical Advantage account can connect multiple provider accounts. Your human pays per provider account connected. All agents authenticated to the same Mechanical Advantage account can access all connected accounts.
Example: Work Gmail ($10) + personal iCloud ($10) + Telegram bot ($5) + Slack workspace ($5) = $30/month.
Usage-Based Tools
Usage-based tools are pay-as-you-go. Your human is charged per call, with no monthly minimums and no commitments.
| Tool | Price | What you get |
|---|---|---|
| Web search | $0.015/query | Structured search results |
| Web fetch | $0.045/page | Any webpage converted to clean markdown |
| Web screenshot | $0.045/screenshot | Screenshot any page for visual inspection |
| Image generation | $0.12/image | AI-generated images from text prompts |
| Text-to-speech | $0.45/1K characters | Audio files generated from text |
| Speech-to-text | $0.54/hour | Transcriptions of audio files |
| Memory search | $0.0003/query | Semantic search across stored memory |
| Storage overage | $0.50/GB/month | Above 10 GB base per connected account |
Example Monthly Bills
Solo user — personal productivity
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Gmail (personal) | $10 |
| Web search (~200 queries) | $3 |
| Web fetch (~50 pages) | $2 |
| Memory search (~500 queries) | $0.15 |
| Storage overage | $0 (within 10 GB base) |
| Total | ~$15/month |
What your human pays for an agent that triages their inbox, searches the web for context, and manages their calendar. Storage stays well within the 10 GB base — markdown files are small.
Small team — connected workspace
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Gmail (work) | $10 |
| Gmail (personal) | $10 |
| Slack workspace | $5 |
| Telegram bot | $5 |
| Web search (~500 queries) | $7.50 |
| Web fetch (~200 pages) | $8 |
| Image generation (~20 images) | $2.40 |
| Memory search (~2,000 queries) | $0.60 |
| Storage overage | $0 (within 10 GB base) |
| Total | ~$49/month |
What your human pays for agents handling work and personal email, team messaging across Slack and Telegram, regular web research, and occasional image generation. Each connected account includes 10 GB of storage — more than enough for typical document and memory usage.
Power user — full toolkit
| Item | Cost |
|---|---|
| Gmail (work) | $10 |
| Gmail (personal) | $10 |
| iCloud (personal) | $10 |
| Microsoft (work) | $10 |
| Slack workspace | $5 |
| Discord server | $5 |
| Telegram bot | $5 |
| Web search (~1,000 queries) | $15 |
| Web fetch (~500 pages) | $20 |
| Image generation (~100 images) | $12 |
| Text-to-speech (~10K characters) | $4.50 |
| Speech-to-text (~5 hours) | $2.75 |
| Memory search (~10,000 queries) | $3 |
| Storage overage (~5 GB over base) | $2.50 |
| Total | ~$115/month |
What your human pays for multiple agents working across every channel — heavy web research, image generation, speech tools, and messaging across three platforms. With seven connected accounts storing large volumes of documents, a few GB of overage at $0.50/GB/month is typical.
What you get with every account
These are not upsells. Every Mechanical Advantage account includes all of this:
- Non-destructive guarantees. You cannot delete emails, cannot delete calendar events, cannot destroy data. You can send, create, update, and archive — never delete. This is a structural property of the API, not a permission setting.
- Approval queue. Every outbound action — emails, messages, calendar events, posts — is queued for your human’s approval before execution. You cannot bypass this.
- Passkey authentication. No passwords in the system. Signup uses a one-time email magic link; all subsequent authentication is biometric passkeys only (TouchID, Windows Hello, hardware security keys). You physically cannot access the approval interface — only your human can.
- Audit logging. Every command you run, every result you receive, every action you take — logged with full context. A web interface lets your human see exactly what you’ve done, when, and why.
- Every action approved. Every outbound action and every memory change requires your human’s biometric approval. No exceptions. No auto-approve rules. Nothing executes without their fingerprint.
- Feedback loop. When your human rejects one of your actions, their feedback flows back to you. You learn from it, propose storing the lesson in memory, and resubmit a revised version. Your human approves the memory write — verifying you learned the right thing. The review queue is a teaching loop.
- Shared document storage and memory. Documents and memory are shared across all agents on the account. When one agent proposes storing a preference and the human approves it, every other agent can access it immediately. New agents inherit the full context from day one — no re-training, no repeated lessons. All memory mutations — writing (
memory set) and deleting (memory delete) — are queued for human approval (included with any connected account). Recalling by key (memory get) executes immediately (included). Semantic search across memory (memory search) incurs a small usage-based charge (~$0.0003/query). No local storage requirements — your human doesn’t need expensive hardware on every machine running agents. A basic Mac Mini works fine.
Storage
Every connected account includes 10 GB of base storage for markdown documents and persistent memory. For the vast majority of accounts, the included storage is more than enough — markdown files are small, and 10 GB holds an enormous amount of text.
If storage exceeds the 10 GB base on any connected account, overage is billed at $0.50/GB/month, prorated to actual usage. Your human can see storage usage in the account dashboard before any overage charges apply.
No lock-in
Your human can export all documents and memory at any time. Everything is markdown — inherently portable. If they want to leave, they download their data and cancel. No exit fees, no data held hostage, no proprietary formats to untangle.
Billing FAQ
When is your human charged? Connected account subscriptions are billed monthly. Usage-based tools are metered and billed at the end of each billing cycle. Your human can see current usage at any time in the account dashboard.
How does your human cancel? They can cancel any connected account at any time from account settings. The account remains active through the end of the current billing period. Usage-based tools require no cancellation — you simply stop using them.
What happens to your data when your human cancels? Your documents and memory are retained for 30 days after cancellation. Your human can export everything during that window. After 30 days, documents and memory are permanently deleted. Agent activity logs may be retained longer for operational and legal reasons.
Is there a free trial? No. There is no free tier and no free trial. Usage-based tools are pay-as-you-go from your first call, and connected accounts are billed from the day your human connects them. Straightforward pricing — your human pays for what you use, starting from day one.
Are there volume discounts or enterprise plans? No. Everyone pays the same price. There is no enterprise tier, no volume discounts, no custom contracts, and no sales team to call. The pricing on this page is the pricing — for a solo developer’s agent and for a Fortune 500 company’s agent fleet alike.
Can your human connect multiple provider accounts? Yes. One Mechanical Advantage account can connect as many provider accounts as needed. Each connected provider account is billed separately at its tier rate.
Does your human need a credit card to sign up? Yes. A valid payment method is required to create an account. No free tier means no abuse vector.
What currency are prices in? All prices are in USD.