{ "_comment": "Verified free-tier / rate-limit table for programmatic LLM API access. Every entry re-verified against the provider's OWN public docs on the as_of date — no third-hand listicle numbers. 'unpublished' means the provider hides the figures behind a login; we say so instead of quoting rumors. Free tiers are the most volatile numbers in this repo: if a row drifted, open an issue.", "as_of": "2026-07-09", "free_tiers": [ { "provider": "OpenRouter (:free models)", "free_offer": "Any model ID ending in :free costs $0 with a plain account", "limits": "20 req/min shared across all :free models; 50 req/day if lifetime credit purchases < $10, 1,000 req/day with a one-time $10+ top-up", "models": "rotating :free pool (varies; see openrouter.ai/models?q=free)", "card_required": "no (optional one-time $10 top-up unlocks 1,000 req/day)", "catch": "free routes go to third-party providers that may train on your data per their own policies; OpenRouter exposes separate free/paid routing settings — check them", "sources": [ "https://openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits", "https://openrouter.ai/docs/features/privacy-and-logging" ], "confidence": "verified" }, { "provider": "Google Gemini API (AI Studio)", "free_offer": "Flash-class models free of charge on the API free tier", "limits": "per-model RPM/RPD no longer published publicly — visible only in AI Studio after login (aistudio.google.com/rate-limit); measured in RPM / input TPM / RPD, per project; RPD resets midnight Pacific; preview/experimental models throttled tighter", "models": "Gemini 3.5 Flash, 3.1 Flash-Lite, 2.5 Flash / Flash-Lite, Gemma 4, Gemini Embedding", "card_required": "no (Tier 1 upgrade requires a billing account)", "catch": "free-tier content is 'used to improve our products' (pricing-page wording); paid tier is not", "sources": [ "https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/rate-limits", "https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing" ], "confidence": "verified (tier structure and data-use wording; exact numbers are login-walled by Google)" }, { "provider": "Groq (GroqCloud Free Plan)", "free_offer": "All hosted open-weight models usable on the Free Plan with per-model caps", "limits": "per-model, e.g. llama-3.3-70b 30 RPM / 1K RPD / 12K TPM / 100K TPD; gpt-oss-120b 30 RPM / 1K RPD / 8K TPM / 200K TPD; llama-3.1-8b-instant 30 RPM / 14.4K RPD / 6K TPM / 500K TPD; qwen3-32b 60 RPM / 1K RPD / 6K TPM / 500K TPD; limits are org-level", "models": "GPT-OSS-120B/20B, Llama-4-Scout, Llama-3.3-70B, Qwen3-32B, Whisper Large V3", "card_required": "no for free use per billing FAQ (payment method needed only to upgrade to Developer tier)", "catch": "daily token caps burn fast on 70B+ models (100K-200K tokens/day); positioned as a trial", "sources": [ "https://console.groq.com/docs/rate-limits", "https://console.groq.com/docs/billing-faqs" ], "confidence": "verified" }, { "provider": "Cerebras Inference (Free Trial tier)", "free_offer": "Free Trial tier, flat limits across listed models", "limits": "5 RPM / 30K TPM / 1M tokens per hour / 1M tokens per day, org-level", "models": "gpt-oss-120b, zai-glm-4.7, gemma-4-31b (the three on the official free-trial limits table)", "card_required": "not stated on any official page", "catch": "5 RPM is single-user interactive only; 'access to all models' marketing vs 3 models on the actual limits table; paid Developer tier starts at $10 with ~10x limits", "sources": [ "https://inference-docs.cerebras.ai/support/rate-limits", "https://www.cerebras.ai/pricing" ], "confidence": "verified (limits and model list)" }, { "provider": "GitHub Models", "free_offer": "Free playground + API for anyone with a GitHub account, tiered by Copilot plan", "limits": "low-tier models 15 RPM / 150 RPD (Copilot Free/Pro; 300 Business, 450 Enterprise), high-tier models 10 RPM / 50 RPD; 8K tokens in / 4K out per request; 5 (low) / 2 (high) concurrent", "models": "GPT-4.1 / GPT-5 / o3 / o4-mini, Llama 4 Scout & Maverick, Phi-4, DeepSeek-R1, Mistral Small/Medium (no Anthropic models in catalog)", "card_required": "no", "catch": "docs call it experimentation-only; 8K-in/4K-out per-request caps rule out long context; production path = paid opt-in or bring-your-own Azure/OpenAI key", "sources": [ "https://docs.github.com/en/github-models/use-github-models/prototyping-with-ai-models", "https://models.github.ai/catalog/models" ], "confidence": "verified" }, { "provider": "Cloudflare Workers AI", "free_offer": "10,000 neurons/day of inference included in Workers Free and Paid plans", "limits": "10K neurons/day hard daily allocation; per-model neuron rates published (e.g. llama-3.2-1b 2,457 neurons/M input tokens; gpt-oss-120b 31,818/M input, 68,182/M output) — roughly 4M input tokens/day on a 1B model or ~314K input tokens/day on gpt-oss-120b (derived arithmetic from official rates)", "models": "Llama 3.3 70B (fp8-fast), Llama 3.1 8B, GPT-OSS-120B/20B, Mistral 7B, DeepSeek-R1-distill-qwen-32b", "card_required": "not stated (Workers Free signup is generally card-free)", "catch": "neurons meter compute, so output tokens burn 5-10x faster than input; hard daily cutoff on the Free plan", "sources": [ "https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/" ], "confidence": "verified (allocation + per-model rates official; token translations are our division)" }, { "provider": "Mistral La Plateforme (Free mode)", "free_offer": "Free API mode by default, no card, for testing/prototyping", "limits": "unpublished — docs state the dimensions (req/s, tokens/min, tokens/month) but actual values are shown per-account in the Admin Console; widely-cited figures (1 RPS / 500K TPM / 1B tokens-month) are NOT on any public official page", "models": "officially unscoped in public docs; third parties report all API models rate-limited free (unverified scope)", "card_required": "no (official: 'API access is enabled by default with no credit card required')", "catch": "free-plan data is used for model training BY DEFAULT — you must manually disable the training toggle; Scale-plan customers are opted out by default", "sources": [ "https://docs.mistral.ai/getting-started/quickstarts/studio/activate-and-generate-api-key", "https://docs.mistral.ai/admin/user-management-finops/tier", "https://help.mistral.ai/en/articles/455207-can-i-opt-out-of-my-input-or-output-data-being-used-for-training" ], "confidence": "mixed (free mode / no card / default-training verified; exact numbers login-walled)" }, { "provider": "Cohere (trial keys)", "free_offer": "Free trial (evaluation) API key, no card", "limits": "1,000 API calls/month total; per-endpoint trial rates: Chat 20 RPM, Rerank 10 RPM, Embed 2,000 inputs/min", "models": "Command A family, Command R+/R/R7B, Embed, Rerank", "card_required": "no", "catch": "evaluation scale only; the same 1,000/month cap also applies to production keys on the newest Chat variants (sales contact to lift)", "sources": [ "https://docs.cohere.com/docs/rate-limits" ], "confidence": "verified" }, { "provider": "SambaNova Cloud", "free_offer": "Free tier applied automatically when no payment method is linked", "limits": "20 RPM / 20 requests per day / 200K tokens per day, uniform across free-tier models", "models": "DeepSeek-V3.1, Llama-3.3-70B, gpt-oss-120b (production); DeepSeek-V3.2, gemma-4-31B (preview)", "card_required": "no", "catch": "20 requests/day is demo-only despite the very fast inference; Developer tier (card linked) lifts to 20M tokens/day", "sources": [ "https://docs.sambanova.ai/docs/en/models/rate-limits" ], "confidence": "verified" }, { "provider": "Hugging Face Inference Providers", "free_offer": "Monthly USD micro-credits usable across 200+ provider-routed models at passthrough prices", "limits": "$0.10/month included credits on free accounts ('subject to change'); PRO $2.00/month; Team/Enterprise $2.00 per seat pooled", "models": "whatever the integrated providers serve (DeepSeek-V3, Llama, FLUX.1-dev, ...)", "card_required": "no (card only for pay-as-you-go top-up)", "catch": "$0.10 is a handful of big-model requests; credits apply only to HF-routed requests, not custom provider keys", "sources": [ "https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-providers/en/pricing" ], "confidence": "verified" }, { "provider": "Z.ai (Zhipu GLM, international)", "free_offer": "GLM Flash models priced Free for input, cached input, AND output", "limits": "unpublished — per-key limits visible after login (z.ai/manage-apikey/rate-limits); concurrency 'dynamically adjusted'; third-party figures (~1 RPS / ~1K RPD) unverified", "models": "GLM-4.7-Flash (text), GLM-4.5-Flash (text), GLM-4.6V-Flash (vision)", "card_required": "not stated", "catch": "opaque, shifting concurrency limits (single-in-flight throttling reported even on paid tiers); China-headquartered provider — weigh your data sensitivity", "sources": [ "https://docs.z.ai/guides/overview/pricing" ], "confidence": "verified (free pricing); rate limits unpublished" } ], "trial_credits_not_free_tiers": [ { "provider": "NVIDIA build.nvidia.com (NIM APIs)", "note": "trial API credits at signup (1,000 requests; +4,000 with a business email — figures from NVIDIA staff forum answers, not a docs page), prototyping-only license, 90-day enterprise-eval path; browser playground use is free and unmetered", "sources": [ "https://docs.api.nvidia.com/nim/docs/faq", "https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/nim-api-credits/305703" ], "confidence": "mixed (mechanics official; credit numbers staff-forum)" }, { "provider": "Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (international)", "note": "new-user per-model free token quotas, hard 90-day expiry from activation, Singapore region only, real-time inference only", "sources": [ "https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/new-free-quota" ], "confidence": "verified (offer + expiry; per-model amounts not publicly extractable)" } ], "discontinued_or_never_free": [ { "provider": "Together AI", "note": "no free models and no free trial as of 2026-07 — official docs: 'Together AI does not currently offer free trials'; $5 minimum prepaid purchase required; the legacy -free endpoints (Llama-Vision-Free, DeepSeek-R1-Distill-70B-free) are gone from the models list. Ignore stale listicles.", "sources": [ "https://docs.together.ai/docs/billing-credits", "https://docs.together.ai/docs/serverless/models" ], "confidence": "verified (negative finding)" }, { "provider": "Moonshot / Kimi (platform.kimi.ai)", "note": "no free tier — official limits page: 'you need to recharge at least $1 to start using'; Tier0 ($1) = 3 RPM / 500K TPM / 1.5M TPD", "sources": [ "https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/limits" ], "confidence": "verified (negative finding)" }, { "provider": "Chutes.ai", "note": "the free daily allowance tied to a $5 deposit was discontinued; now subscription plans from $3/month", "sources": [ "https://chutes.ai" ], "confidence": "reported (pricing pages via search; not directly fetched)" }, { "provider": "xAI (Grok API)", "note": "the much-cited $150/month data-sharing credits program is no longer documented on any public official page (the docs.x.ai data-sharing page 404s; billing FAQ describes prepaid credits only) — we won't print numbers we can't verify; check console.x.ai after login", "sources": [ "https://docs.x.ai/developers/faq/billing" ], "confidence": "unverified (official pages omit or contradict third-party claims)" } ] }