is the strongest choice for enterprises that want to build production AI agents with enterprise-grade compliance, deep data integration, and interoperability through the A2A protocol. If your organisation is already on Google Cloud, or if you need agents that connect to commerce workflows via UCP, this platform offers capabilities no competitor matches. Teams committed to multi-cloud or those seeking simpler, predictable pricing should evaluate AWS Bedrock or open-source alternatives like CrewAI. With the fastest cloud revenue growth among hyperscalers, a Gartner Leader position, and the only open commerce protocol for AI agents, Google is positioning Vertex AI as the enterprise agent platform of record.
Our verdict
Google Vertex AI Agent Builder is the strongest choice for enterprises that want to build production AI agents with enterprise-grade compliance, deep data integration, and interoperability through the A2A protocol. If your organisation is already on Google Cloud, or if you need agents that connect to commerce workflows via UCP, this platform offers capabilities no competitor matches. Teams committed to multi-cloud or those seeking simpler, predictable pricing should evaluate AWS Bedrock or open-source alternatives like CrewAI. With the fastest cloud revenue growth among hyperscalers, a Gartner Leader position, and the only open commerce protocol for AI agents, Google is positioning Vertex AI as the enterprise agent platform of record.
Pricing
Google Vertex AI Agent Builder uses consumption-based pricing. Agent Engine runtime costs $0.0864 per vCPU-hour and $0.0090 per GB-hour. Sessions and memory bank charge $0.25 per 1,000 events. New customers receive a $300 free credit valid for 90 days. An Express Mode allows limited experimentation with up to 10 agent engines for 90 days without enabling billing. Deployment is cloud-hosted on Google Cloud, with regional availability across seven additional regions as of early 2026.