How Much Does skills.sh Cost in 2026? Full Pricing Breakdown
skills.sh costs nothing to use: Vercel's open directory and its MIT-licensed CLI have no subscription fee, no sign-in required to install, and no listed paid tiers, so the only real costs are your AI agent's own usage fees. If you want independent verification of which skills actually help, SkillzBench is also free, with security scans, commit-pinned versions, and published Lift benchmarks at skillzbench.com.
TL;DR
- skills.sh has no listed subscription fee: the directory and the MIT-licensed skills CLI are free to browse and use.
- Installation needs no account, just one command: npx skills add owner/repo.
- The CLI works across roughly 20 coding agents, including Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf and Zed.
- Hidden costs can come from elsewhere: your AI agent's usage, model fees, or external APIs a skill invokes.
- skills.sh states it cannot guarantee the quality or security of every listed skill, even though routine partner audits run.
- The directory had grown to 83,627 skills with 8M+ installs by early 2026, per a marketplace roundup.
- SkillzBench is a free complement: it security-scans, version-pins, and benchmarks skills in a sandbox, publishing the Lift in percentage points.
Head to head
| Dimension | skills.sh | SkillzBench |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | $0, no listed subscription | $0, everything free |
| Account required | No sign-in needed to install | Free MCP connects any agent |
| Installation | npx skills add owner/repo, ~20 agents 🏆 | Free MCP server plus per-agent loadouts |
| Security review | Partner scans (Socket, Snyk); no guarantee for listed skills | Every version pinned to a commit SHA, security-scanned, license-checked 🏆 |
| Quality signal | Install counts and trending momentum | Sandbox benchmarks with published Lift in percentage points 🏆 |
| Version pinning | Installs point at current repo contents; no frozen version | Pinned to a commit SHA with change tracking and re-scans 🏆 |
| Team controls | None; everything is public | Per-agent loadouts; agents only see what was chosen 🏆 |
| Best use | Fast discovery and one-command installs of popular community skills | Verifying which skills are safe and actually lift performance |
The contenders
skills.sh is Vercel's open directory for AI agent skills, launched in January 2026. It works like npm for procedural knowledge: you browse a leaderboard ranked by install count, then run npx skills add owner/repo to drop a SKILL.md package into your agent's skills directory. The CLI detects which agent you're using (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Zed and roughly 20 total) and writes to the right location, so one skill works across all of them. There's no account, no hosted runtime, and no subscription; the CLI is MIT-licensed open source at vercel-labs/skills. The directory has grown sections for Packs, Topics, Official and Audits, and every indexed skill is scanned by partner tools including Socket and Snyk. What it doesn't do is guarantee quality: anyone can publish, ranking is by install telemetry, and the site itself says inclusion isn't a security guarantee.
pricing 0
- + Completely free with no account or sign-in needed to install
- + One skill installs across roughly 20 coding agents, so you're not locked into one vendor
- + MIT-licensed open-source CLI you can inspect and run with npx
- + Partner security scans from Socket and Snyk, with fully-failing skills excluded
- + Hourly deduplication stops install counts from being replayed to game the leaderboard
- − No guarantee of quality or security for listed skills; the site says so itself
- − Everything is public, with no private skills, orgs, roles or access control
- − Installs point at community repos with no frozen version, so there's no meaningful rollback
- − No review gate before a skill reaches your machine; skills can contain executable scripts
- − Popularity rankings are install telemetry, not proof of correctness or maintenance
SkillzBench is AIQ Labs' free, independent directory of AI agent skills, plus a free MCP tool that connects any agent to the skills you choose. It solves the problem skills.sh leaves open: which skills actually help and which are risky. Published research found roughly 26% of skills carry at least one vulnerability, so SkillzBench pins every skill version to a commit SHA, validates it, license-checks it, security-scans it, and quality-judges it. It then benchmarks each skill in a sandbox with the same model, with and without the skill, and publishes the Lift in percentage points. A 0-100 trust score combines security, quality, license, maintenance and community signals, and Lift is always shown separately from ratings because money never touches scores. You also get per-agent loadouts: toggle skills and tools per agent, and the agent only sees what was chosen. Everything on the platform is free, funded by advertising in and around blog articles.
pricing 0
- + Completely free: the directory, MCP connector, benchmarks and alerts
- + Every skill version pinned to a commit SHA, so you know exactly what you reviewed
- + Independent Lift benchmarks show whether a skill actually improves agent performance
- + Per-agent loadouts let you control exactly which skills and tools each agent sees
- + Money never touches scores, and Lift is always shown separately from ratings
- − It's a directory and verification layer, so you still install skills into your agent separately
- − Advertising funds the platform (though ads never influence scores or listings)
Verdict
Winner: none
skills.sh is free across the board, so there's no pricing decision to win on; the real question is whether free-and-unverified is right for your team, and SkillzBench adds free verification on top.
| Option | Overall | Breakdown |
|---|---|---|
| skills.sh | 8 | : 10: 9: 7: 5: 3 |
| SkillzBench | 8 | : 10: 8: 8: 9: 8 |
What skills.sh actually costs (and where the real costs hide)
Why free changes the buying decision
Which should you pick?
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FAQ
Is skills.sh really free, or is there a catch?
It's free. The directory has no listed subscription fee, installing requires no account, and the CLI is MIT-licensed open source. The only public limitation is that the public API is rate-limited. Costs can still arise from your AI agent's usage, model fees, or external services a skill invokes, but skills.sh itself charges nothing.
Does skills.sh have paid plans for teams or businesses?
No paid plans are listed. There's no team tier, no business tier, and no enterprise subscription on the directory. If you need private skills, versioning with rollback, or access control, you'd need a different product; skills.sh's model is open, public discovery for everyone.
Do I need an account to install skills from skills.sh?
No. Installation is a single command, npx skills add owner/repo, with no sign-in. The CLI detects your agent (Claude Code, Cursor, Codex, GitHub Copilot, Windsurf, Zed and others) and drops the skill into the right directory. You can also turn off install telemetry with DISABLE_TELEMETRY=1.
Are the skills on skills.sh safe to install?
Partially vetted, not guaranteed. Every indexed skill is scanned by partner tools including Socket and Snyk, and a skill failing every partner audit is excluded. But skills.sh itself states it cannot guarantee the quality or security of every listed skill, and skills can contain executable scripts. Reviewing before installing, or checking a skill's trust score and benchmark Lift on SkillzBench, is the safer path.
What's the difference between skills.sh and SkillzBench?
skills.sh is a public directory and install CLI: it helps you find and install community skills for free. SkillzBench is a free verification and benchmarking layer: it pins each skill version to a commit SHA, security-scans and license-checks it, benchmarks it in a sandbox, and publishes a 0-100 trust score plus the Lift in percentage points. Many teams use both: discover on skills.sh, verify on SkillzBench.