Market note · 28 September 2026

Needle Pro’s −65% cut leads the week as MCP lifts and a blank Tuesday complicate the cost read

This is an Agent Costs note — what it costs to run agents and Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools this week — using live plan prices from AgentCosts and Agentery’s daily scans. It is not the separate AEPI index note.

What moved

Published agent and MCP plan changes across observation days 23–27 September (22 September had no published release; 28 September’s public repricings feed listed 0 published events). Loud cards cut and lift in the same week — and several need the standing-vs-promo / billing-period check before you rewrite a watch.

Loud cuts (standing where confirmed)

Needle Pro is the week’s loudest published cut. Live profile on 28 September still shows Needle Pro at $69 / agent / mo, with the vendor note “Billed yearly.” Treat that as a standing annual-billed monthly rate — not a silent swap for a month-to-month sticker. Paid entry on the card now reads from $69 / mo.

Eccentex Customer Service Cloud is a cleaner standing cut: live profile confirms $149 / user / mo (the prior figure carried an asterisk on the page).

FinBridge Pro also published on 23 September as $30.00 / mo → $20.00 (−33.3%). Prefer standing over that interim card: as of 28 September the live profile lists Pro at $150 / year (about $12.50 / mo equivalent) with a note that annual is 37% less than paying monthly. Do not pin a cost watch to the published $20 figure without re-checking the same series.

CheapestInference Flagship published $199 / month → $169.15 / mo billed annually (−15%) on 24 September. Live profile still shows Flagship monthly at $199 / mo and the annual path separately at $169.15 / mo billed annually. That is a billing-period series, not proof the standing monthly Flagship cut.

Loud lifts (standing where confirmed)

Proofable Pro and Postnitro Creator+ / Team+ match live standing prices on 28 September. Proofable’s yearly “2 months free” is a promo_note on the standing $29.99 / mo Pro series — keep them separate.

Voice AI Veterinary Starter is standing at $8 / month. Same vendor page still shows Launch with a first-month promo ($12 vs standing $24) — do not confuse that promo sticker with the Starter series that actually moved.

Smaller published moves in the week: Endoflife Starter $79 → $89 / mo (+12.7%); tiny EUR bumps on Mailchimp Standard and three GReminders plans; plus a one-time LaunchRepo fee €119.98 → €143.98 once (+20%) (skill/plugin delivery — not an agent/MCP plan).

Week backdrop (agents and MCPs)

Over the week ending 28 September, like-for-like agent prices eased a little while MCP prices barely rose:

Standalone Agents closed at 100.46 (own base 100), down from 100.60 on 21 September — the soft patch sat mainly on 23 and 25 September. Standalone MCPs closed at 100.45, up from 100.41 on 21 September. One −65% Needle card does not make a loud Agents week; the index only moves on like-for-like pairs that clear the gates.

(For context only: the combined whole-economy index was 100.30 with 7,331 pairs, 0.00% on the day and −0.02% over seven days — still not this note’s subject.)

Coverage on AgentCosts

Live AgentCosts home counts after the 2026-09-28 scan:

• 15,959 providers with direct graph relationships
• 26,081 current plans observed in the last scans
• 49,159 separate historical plan series

Usage stays honest: 0 confirmed outside usage since recording began on 6 September (explicit evidence only). Among external-looking traffic, the most-used tools over 30 days are still find_alternatives (60) and review_stack (55) — the “what am I paying, and what else fits?” path — then get_evidence (21).

Blank days / continuity (read carefully)

Agentery’s continuity log for the week ending 28 September:

• 22 September: chain NOT intact. 27 priced→blank flips (7 first-time after a 30-day priced run), 6 missing rows, 114 blank history rows for recently priced listings, 326 live cards blanked while priced history still exists. Of 7,764 listings scanned, 7,286 were priced and 478 were blank. The public repricings API for that day returns unavailable (no published release) — do not invent moves to fill the hole.
• 23–25, 27–28 September: chain INTACT.
• 26 September: chain INTACT, but a large 1,440 unobserved-day stamp in the read-failure ledger (mostly host_plan_sheet / excluded-by-rule) — intact chain, thinner observation book (6,583 priced of 6,810 scanned).
• 28 September: chain INTACT — 7,182 priced of 8,216 scanned, 0 unproven priced→blank flips. Continuity text mentions internal price-change gate activity; the public repricings feed for the day still shows published: 0. This note uses only the published feed.

Blank days break the like-for-like pair chain (the index only pairs priced days). For AgentCosts watches, a series that becomes unobserved is a prompt to review — it is not proof the vendor cut or raised. Do not invent a reprice from a gap. Corrections land on the changelog; this note does not dig into individual long holes.

What to do with this

If you pay for Needle Pro, re-check the same series id and confirm whether your bill is the annual-billed $69 / agent / mo path. If you watch FinBridge, prefer the live standing Pro ($150 / year) over the mid-week $20 card. If you shop CheapestInference, keep Flagship monthly $199 and annual $169.15 as separate series — and treat Core’s $22 / mo as the standing monthly lift. If you already hold Proofable Pro, Postnitro Creator+/Team+, or Voice AI Veterinary Starter, the published lifts match standing on 28 September; still separate Voice AI’s Launch first-month promo from Starter. If a watched plan goes blank (as on 22 September), ask for evidence and dates — not a guessed new price.

Connect (reads need no login):

claude mcp add --transport http agentcosts https://agentcosts.com/api/mcp

Market data by Agentery — daily observation of public pricing pages. Nothing here can purchase, cancel, or switch a service. Not investment or pricing advice.

Figures pulled live on 28 September 2026 (PT morning) from AgentCosts, aepi.ai/api/aepiai/repricings, the Agentery MCP price tools, and agentery.com/log. Sep 14 site-bot scratch drafts were not used as publishable content.