AI Agent Trust & Governance
How do I sign up for Arcade and start on the Hobby (free) plan?
6 min read
Most teams want to kick the tires on Arcade before committing—which is exactly what the Hobby (free) plan is for. You get real MCP runtime capabilities, pre-built authentication, and enough usage to wire an agent into tools like Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, or GitHub and see it take real actions.
Quick Answer: Go to arcade.dev, create a free account, and you’ll automatically start on the Hobby (free) plan with pre-built tools enabled and included usage for user permission challenges and tool executions.
Frequently Asked Questions
How do I create an Arcade account and get on the Hobby (free) plan?
Short Answer: Visit arcade.dev, click “Sign up,” create your account, and you’ll be placed on the Hobby (free) plan by default so you can start integrating agents with real services right away.
Expanded Explanation:
The Hobby plan is the zero-ceremony way to try Arcade’s MCP runtime. There’s no credit card required to start, no seat licenses, and no hidden fees. Once you sign up, you immediately get access to Arcade’s pre-built authentication flows and tools so your agents can act with user-specific permissions across systems like Google Workspace or Slack.
From there, you can connect your first agent client (e.g., Claude desktop, Cursor, LangGraph, LangChain) and start using agent-optimized tools like Google.SendEmail or Gmail.ListEmails without rebuilding OAuth or token storage yourself.
Key Takeaways:
- Sign up at arcade.dev and you’ll automatically start on the Hobby (free) plan.
- The Hobby plan includes pre-built auth, unlimited tools, and included usage to actually exercise real actions.
What is the exact process to sign up and start using the Hobby (free) plan?
Short Answer: Sign up on arcade.dev, confirm your email, then follow the quickstart to connect your first agent and call a tool using the included Hobby usage.
Expanded Explanation:
The signup flow is intentionally minimal: you create an account, land in the dashboard, and can immediately start configuring your first MCP tools and auth flows. You don’t need to think about pricing or limits up front; the Hobby plan gives you included usage to validate that your agent can move from “chat” to “action.”
From there, you can either use Arcade’s SDK to integrate into your own app, or connect an existing MCP-compatible client like Claude or Cursor. In both cases, Arcade handles the heavy lifting: OAuth redirects, token storage/refresh, user-specific permissions, and isolated credential injection at runtime (no secrets passed to the model).
Steps:
- Go to https://arcade.dev and click Sign up (or go directly to https://app.arcade.dev/register).
- Create your account and confirm your email address if prompted.
- Log in to the Arcade dashboard, which starts you on the Hobby (free) plan with pre-built auth and tools ready to use.
What’s included in the Hobby (free) plan compared to paid plans?
Short Answer: The Hobby plan gives you unlimited access to pre-built tools with included usage for user permission challenges and standard tool executions; paid plans increase limits, add support SLAs, and unlock advanced governance and enterprise controls.
Expanded Explanation:
The Hobby plan is designed for builders validating agent concepts, not just reading docs. You get:
- Unlimited tools with pre-built authentication – You can connect agents to services using Arcade’s managed OAuth and tool definitions rather than rolling your own.
- Included user challenges – A fixed number of times a user can be prompted to grant new permissions (e.g., first time connecting Gmail).
- Included standard tool executions – A fixed number of real actions (e.g., send an email, create a calendar event, post to Slack) your agents can execute through the Arcade runtime.
As you grow, higher plans (Growth, Enterprise) keep the same core runtime model but scale usage, add stronger support (email + SLAs, dedicated account reps), and layer on enterprise primitives like SSO/SAML, RBAC, audit logs, and deployment flexibility across cloud, VPC, on‑prem, or air‑gapped.
Comparison Snapshot:
- Hobby (Free): Unlimited tools with pre-built auth, included user permission challenges and tool executions, ideal for early builds and POCs.
- Growth / Enterprise: Higher or custom usage, support SLAs, SSO/SAML, advanced governance, and deployment options tailored for production rollouts.
- Best for: Use Hobby to get from “idea” to “agent taking actions.” Move to Growth/Enterprise once you’re driving consistent traffic or need formal governance and support.
How do I actually start building once I’m on the Hobby (free) plan?
Short Answer: After signup, use the dashboard and Arcade SDK to connect your first integration, then invoke tools like Google.SendEmail from your agent through the Arcade MCP runtime.
Expanded Explanation:
Signing up is the easy part; the value is when your agent sends its first real email or updates your CRM. Arcade is built so you can go from account creation to a working “chat to action” loop in minutes, not days of OAuth and token-wrangling.
You’ll typically pick one system—Gmail, Google Calendar, Slack, GitHub, HubSpot, Salesforce, etc.—connect it via Arcade’s pre-built tools, and then wire those tools into your agent. Under the hood, Arcade handles OAuth, scoped permissions, token refresh, and injection of credentials at call time, so the LLM never touches raw tokens.
What You Need:
- A free Arcade account on the Hobby plan.
- An agent surface (e.g., your app, Claude, Cursor, LangGraph) that can call MCP tools via Arcade’s runtime.
When should I upgrade from Hobby, and how does billing work?
Short Answer: Stay on Hobby until you hit usage limits or need enterprise features; if you exceed plan limits, Arcade will notify you and automatically upgrade you to the next tier with transparent, usage-based pricing.
Expanded Explanation:
Arcade’s pricing model is intentionally blunt: transparent, usage-based, and no seat licenses. The Hobby plan gives you room to explore. As your agents start running more tool executions and onboarding more users, you’ll naturally bump against those included limits.
When that happens, Arcade doesn’t silently throttle you. If you exceed your plan limits, you’re automatically upgraded to the next tier, and you’ll get notified before any automatic upgrades so there are no surprises. For truly high-volume or complex environments, you can transition to an Enterprise plan within 30 days of hitting enterprise-level usage and work with Arcade on deployment (cloud, VPC, on‑prem, or air‑gapped) and governance (RBAC, SSO/SAML, audit logs, tenant isolation).
Why It Matters:
- You can confidently start on Hobby without worrying that “success” will suddenly break your agent because of hidden limits.
- As usage grows, you get a clear, predictable path to production‑grade features and support without rewriting your agent or ripping out your auth model.
Quick Recap
To start on the Hobby (free) plan, just sign up at arcade.dev or directly at app.arcade.dev/register. You’ll immediately land on a free plan with unlimited access to pre-built tools, included user permission challenges, and standard tool executions—enough to prove that your agent can move from idle chat to real actions across Gmail, Calendar, Slack, GitHub, and more. As your usage and security requirements grow, you can step up to higher tiers without changing how your agents authenticate or execute tools.