Sarvam Launches Cheaper, India-Hosted Coding Agent

Indian AI startup Sarvam has launched a new AI coding agent for engineering teams, named Sarvam Code, during its Epoch 2026 conference. The company positions the agent as a tool designed to build sustainable code for the long term, breaking down the coding workflow into three specialized agents: a planner, a worker, and a verifier.

Sarvam Co-founder Pratyush Kumar stated that the agent's architecture addresses a key weakness in open-source models: reliably determining when a coding task is complete. Kumar highlighted that Sarvam Code is not only hosted in India but also offers competitive pricing compared to global alternatives.

Using the Terminal-Bench 2.1 benchmark, Sarvam demonstrated that its coding agent costs approximately $2 per solved task. This is significantly lower than the $4.1 to $27.8 per task attributed to similar agents from Claude Code and OpenAI's Codex. The startup also claimed superior performance compared to offerings from Claude and ChatGPT.

Sarvam Code is rolling out in early beta via the company's Indus platform, which utilizes a unified credit system across its AI products. The pricing model charges only for completed work, excluding retries and failed attempts. This launch is part of a broader announcement from Sarvam, including its India-hosted inference platform and infrastructure updates.

The startup, which recently achieved unicorn status, has also appointed Devendra Singh Chaplot, a founding member at Mistral AI, as an advisor.