ByteDance · since 2025-01-19 · 2× · last seen Jun 29, 2026
Trae ("The Real AI Engineer") is a VS Code-based AI-integrated development environment (AI-IDE) developed by ByteDance, officially released on January 19, 2025. It is not a standalone open-source language model but an IDE front-end that connects to third-party cloud models (including GPT-4o, Claude family, Gemini 2.5 Pro, and ByteDance's own Doubao model) via APIs. It competes directly with Cursor and Windsurf, positioning itself via a free entry tier; since February 2026 a token-based billing system with five tiers (Free through Ultra) applies. ByteDance does not release its own model weights; model size, context window, and hardware requirements are not officially published as specifications.
Features
| License | Trae IDE itself proprietary (freemium); separate 'Trae Agent' module on GitHub under MIT license |
| Multimodality | Yes – image upload for design references/error screenshots, multimodal interaction in Builder Mode |
| Platform | macOS and Windows (10/11) desktop IDE, VS Code-based; Linux planned |
| Price per 1M Tokens | No fixed price per 1M tokens published; subscription model with Free/Pro tiers from $3 (first month) or $10-$100/month, token-based usage billing |
| Release Date | January 19-20, 2025 (global launch); Trae Agent (open source) released July 4, 2025 |