One plan, one price.
Thirteen cents a task, no overage, and a free month to find out. Asking Melvin questions is always free.
Free trial
No card required30 days or 50 runs, whichever ends first.
The whole app, not a cut-down version. No card is taken, so the trial cannot turn into a charge.
- No card, everWe never ask for one during the trial, so there is nothing that could auto-charge.
- 50 runs in totalAbout a dozen a week for four weeks.
- 30 days from the day you first sign in
- Every skill and integration, same as Orbit
- Model access included, or bring your own API keys
Orbit
No overage$26 for 200 runs. Thirteen cents a task.
Sign in with an emailed code, then Stripe. Melvin never sees your card.
For people who hand Melvin work every day. Billed monthly, cancel whenever you like.
Everything in the trial, plus:
- 200 runs every calendar monthMore than six a day, every day, including the days you do not open your laptop.
- $26 is the maximumNo overage, no top-ups, no way for a run to cost more than the subscription.
- Counter resets on the 1st (UTC)Not on your signup date. Unused runs do not roll over.
- A run is counted when it startsIncluding one that then fails. See below for what we do about that.
- Cancel from the billing page, in the Stripe customer portalNo retention offer, no exit survey, no email required.
Prices in US dollars, tax may be added at checkout. Payments handled by Stripe — Melvin never sees your card details.
What counts as a run
One run is one agent run — the moment you hand Melvin a task and it starts working. It is counted once when the run starts, no matter how many apps it opens or steps it takes to finish.
Free, and uncapped, on both plans:
- Asking Melvin a question and reading the answer
- Re-reading any past run and everything it produced
- Creating, naming, and editing a saved task or workflow
- Connecting an app or granting a macOS permission
- Changing any setting
The counter moves in exactly one place: the moment you hand Melvin a task and the run starts. One run is one job — not tokens, not credits, not minutes of compute. A ten-second run and a forty-minute run across six apps cost the same.
Why $26
One run is not one model call. Melvin plans, looks at your screen, opens apps, reads what came back, and decides what to do next — dozens of model calls and a lot of tool work for a single task you handed over. That costs real money to serve, which is why runs are metered.
A question is one cheap call. That is the whole reason asking Melvin things is free and unlimited on both plans, and it is not a promotion we can withdraw — it follows from what the two things cost. The counter only moves when Melvin goes and does something.
$26 for 200 runs is thirteen cents a task, and that is the whole of it: no overage rate, no per-seat fee, no upsell behind it. Whether thirteen cents clears depends on what an hour of your time costs and on how much of the work you hand over actually lands. We have not been running long enough to tell you an average, and we are not going to make one up.
If you would rather not pay us for model access at all, put your own API keys in Settings on either plan. Your provider then bills you directly for inference. The run allowance still applies — the subscription pays for the product, not only the tokens.
What Melvin cannot break
Safe mode blocks the sharp tools
With Safe mode on, Melvin cannot run shell commands, AppleScript, JXA, or arbitrary JavaScript inside a web page. Those tools are refused outright, not sandboxed and hoped for.
Risky steps stop for confirmation
On a run Melvin classes as critical, the destructive tools — sending mail, deleting or moving files, running shell — are refused and wait for you. When the confirmation cannot be shown, the step still refuses rather than assuming consent.
Some actions have an undo window
Melvin holds a sent email or a newly created calendar event for about 30 seconds so you can pull it back. Files it deletes go to the Trash, so those are recoverable for as long as the Trash holds them.
Outbound requests are screened
Every URL Melvin is about to fetch is checked before anything leaves. Unknown hosts, raw IP addresses, and encoded payloads hidden in a query string are flagged for your confirmation or blocked.
On first launch Melvin asks for Screen Recording, Accessibility and Automation, and nothing else. No kernel extension, no always-on background upload. What each permission is for.
What Melvin does not do
Things worth knowing before you pay, rather than after.
- It does not run while your Mac is asleep or you are signed out. Melvin drives real apps on your machine, so the machine has to be awake and unlocked.
- There is no team plan. No shared billing, no admin console, no per-seat management.
- macOS 14 or newer, Apple Silicon only. There is no Intel build, no Windows build, and no iPhone app.
- There is no annual plan and no discount for paying ahead. Monthly is the only way to buy it.
- 200 runs is generous for daily use and is not enough to run Melvin as an unattended background service. If you hit the cap two months running, tell us — that is a pricing problem on our side, not yours.
When a limit is reached
- What happens when the trial ends?
- Melvin keeps answering questions. Nothing is deleted and nothing is charged — there is no card on file. New runs stop until you subscribe, and subscribing turns them back on immediately.
- What happens when I use all 200 Orbit runs?
- Melvin keeps answering questions, with no cap. New runs wait until the counter resets on the 1st. Nothing further is charged: there is no overage rate and no top-up to buy, so $26 is the most Orbit can cost you in a month.
- Does the trial turn into a paid plan on its own?
- No. We never ask for a card during the trial, so there is nothing that could be charged. When the 30 days or the 50 runs are up, new runs stop and nothing else happens until you choose to subscribe.
- Do unused runs roll over?
- No. The counter resets to 200 on the 1st of each month, UTC, whether you used three runs or two hundred. It resets on the calendar month rather than your signup date, so your first month is a part month.
- Do failed runs count?
- A run is counted when it starts, because the model calls are spent whether or not it finishes. If a run fails on our side, email support@trymelvin.com and we will put the run back. A run you cancel yourself still counts — it already drove real apps before you stopped it.
- How do I cancel?
- From the billing page, in the Stripe customer portal. The subscription stops renewing and you keep access until the end of the period you already paid for.
Start with the trial
Download Melvin, sign in once, and the 30 days start. No card, so there is nothing to cancel.
Next steps
The download page covers the install and the macOS permissions. Your plan and usage live on the billing page, the terms spell out renewal and cancellation, and help answers the rest. Buying for a team? Shared administration and central billing are not shipped yet — see Teams.
Melvin 0.4.2, released July 2026. Signed with a Developer ID certificate and notarised by Apple. What changed. Support goes to a person, not a queue: support@trymelvin.com.