Meterless.ai is a local-first AI platform built around three products — Relay, Gaia, and Swarms — that save the reusable structure behind AI work (missions, memory, agent graphs) on your own device instead of throwing it away after each session. Only some of that is usable the same day you sign up; the rest sits behind a waitlist.
Short answer: Meterless.ai is a local-first AI platform with three products: Relay (Windows-only desktop automation, free download), Swarms (free, browser-based multi-agent graphs, any OS), and Gaia (persistent AI memory, waitlist-only). All three are Apache 2.0 open source. In my testing, Relay and Swarms were usable immediately; Gaia required a work-email waitlist signup with no ship date given.
What you'll need
You don't need a paid account to try anything Meterless ships today. Swarms and the free tools (file conversion, PDF editing, image batching) run straight in a Chromium-based browser, no sign-up at all. Relay is a native Windows app, so you'll need Windows 10 or 11 — it uses direct Win32 input control, and there's no Mac or Linux build of it. If you want Gaia, the persistent-memory product, you'll need a work email address to join its waitlist; Meterless doesn't publish a release date, so treat that as an unknown, not a delay you can plan around. For any of the three, an OpenAI-, Anthropic-, or locally-hosted-model API key helps, since Meterless routes work to whichever model you connect rather than shipping its own frontier model.
Step-by-step: Getting started with Meterless.ai
1. Start with a free tool, no account needed
Go to meterless.ai and open one of the browser tools — Anyfile (file conversion), PDF Workbench, Image Batch Studio, Anymedia, or the Watermark Remover. In my testing, each one loaded and ran entirely in-tab; the site is explicit that files aren't uploaded for processing, which is worth confirming yourself if you're working with anything sensitive.
2. Try Swarms with a single goal
Swarms is the fastest way to see what Meterless actually does. Open the Swarms tool, type one goal in plain language, and it auto-generates a graph of specialized agents to work it — the site advertises swarms of 300+ agents with up to 64 running in parallel. When I ran through the interface, the output lands in a ranked gallery you can inspect node by node, and you can re-run a single branch instead of the whole graph.
3. Download Relay if you're on Windows
If you want desktop automation — closing books in Excel, reconciling a trading app, triaging an inbox — download Relay for Windows from the site. You pick which open windows Relay can see (up to eight per mission), it proposes a plan, and every click is checked against the actual rendered pixels before it fires. That scoping is the whole safety pitch: Relay never touches a shell, so it can't reach your filesystem or network beyond the windows you selected.
4. Save a working run as a mission
Once a Relay task works the way you want, save it as a mission. Missions can be replayed on a schedule — hourly, daily, or weekly — and each run keeps a log, so a missed or drifted run is visible rather than silent.
5. Join the Gaia waitlist if you want persistent memory
Gaia is the piece meant to carry context across sessions: projects, decisions, and research that would otherwise reset every time you open a new chat. It's gated behind an "insider waitlist" — you submit a work email and Meterless says it'll notify you when access opens. There's no trial version to test in the meantime.
6. Check the GitHub repo before you trust the numbers
Meterless publishes its core engines under Apache 2.0 on GitHub. Before repeating any of the platform's own performance claims, I'd read the source or at least skim the repo's README, since the token-savings figures on the marketing site are internal benchmarks, not numbers an outside lab has reproduced.
Example prompts you can copy
Swarms and Gaia both work from a single natural-language goal rather than a form, so the specificity of your first prompt matters more than any setting you'd tweak later. A few starting points to adapt:
- "Research five options for [your decision], compare them on cost and setup time, and recommend one with reasons."
- "Generate ten distinct visual directions for a loading screen for [your product], varying the animation style and color system."
- "Pull this week's numbers from [your spreadsheet or dashboard], flag anything that moved more than 10%, and draft a two-paragraph summary."
- "Turn this raw meeting transcript into a structured recap: decisions made, owners, and open questions."
Name the format you want back (a table, a ranked list, a short memo) — Meterless's agents plan around the goal you give them, and a vague goal produces a vague plan.
Common mistakes to avoid
The first mistake is assuming everything on the site is available the moment you land there. Relay and Swarms are live; Gaia and the standalone "Swarm" engine source are both waitlist-gated, and I couldn't find a published ship date for either. Second, expecting Relay to run on a Mac — it's Win32-native and Windows-only, so macOS and Linux users only get Gaia and Swarms, either through the combined installer or in a browser. Third, granting Relay a wide window scope out of convenience; the product's entire risk model depends on you selecting only the windows a given mission actually needs, and adding extra ones defeats that. Fourth, treating Meterless's own comparison numbers — the "7.3–15× fewer tokens" figure and its self-scored table against other AI systems — as independently audited; they're the vendor's internal benchmarks, and I'd want a third party to reproduce them before repeating them as fact. Fifth, letting a scheduled mission run unattended before you've watched it complete once with the approval gate on — the vision-verification step exists specifically so a misread click doesn't cascade into the next eight steps.
Relay vs. Gaia vs. Swarms at a glance
| Relay | Gaia | Swarms | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Nickname on site | "The Hands" | "The Mind" | "The Many" |
| What it does | Desktop automation across Windows apps | Persistent AI memory and research workspace | Auto-generated multi-agent task graphs |
| Access today | Free download | Waitlist (work email) | Free, in-browser |
| Platform | Windows 10/11 only, native Win32 | macOS/Windows/Linux installer, or browser | Any browser, any OS |
| Version at last check | v0.8.1 | v2.4.1 | v0.9.3 |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 | Apache 2.0 |
| Best for | Repeating a task across up to 8 app windows | Work that needs to compound across sessions | Fast, one-off exploration with many agents at once |
I confirmed these version numbers and access details directly on meterless.ai and its GitHub org on August 19, 2026; a fast-moving open-source project like this can bump version numbers and flip a waitlist to open access within weeks, so check the live pages before you plan around any of this.
Tools that make this easier
If you're weighing Relay against other ways to automate repetitive desktop work for a small team, my best AI tool for small business guide covers broader-scope options that don't require a Windows-only install. For the batch content-generation angle Swarms is going after, best AI tool for content creation rounds up dedicated tools built specifically for that job. If you write or edit code and are curious how Meterless's agent-graph approach compares to purpose-built coding assistants, see best AI tool for code. Before you repeat any vendor's own benchmark numbers — Meterless's included — AI tool ratings walks through how to read marketing claims like that without getting fooled. My AI tool reviews page explains the testing method behind pieces like this one. And since Meterless ships a Watermark Remover as one of its free tools, how AI text watermarking works is useful background on what that tool is actually stripping out.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Meterless.ai free?
Partly. The free tools (Anyfile, PDF Workbench, Image Batch Studio, Anymedia, Watermark Remover) and Swarms require no account and no payment. Relay is also a free download for Windows. Gaia's pricing isn't public yet — it's still waitlist-only, so there's no plan page to check.
How long does it take to start using Meterless.ai?
Trying a free tool or Swarms takes a couple of minutes — open the browser tool and give it a goal. Installing Relay and getting a mission running end to end took me closer to fifteen minutes, mostly spent scoping which windows to allow and reviewing the proposed plan before letting it run.
What is the easiest way to try Meterless.ai?
Start with Swarms in a browser before installing anything. It's free, works on any OS, and gives you a fair sense of how the platform plans and executes a goal without committing to a Windows install or a waitlist signup.
Does Meterless.ai work on Mac?
Only partly. Relay is Windows 10/11 only because it drives native Win32 input. Gaia and Swarms both work on macOS, either through the combined desktop installer or directly in a browser.
Is Meterless.ai open source?
Yes. Relay, Gaia, and Swarms share the Meterless Runtime, released under the Apache 2.0 license on GitHub. You can read the source before trusting any of the platform's own performance claims.