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Free LLM API Guide: Best Forever-Free Tiers & Trial Credits for Developers

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The Ultimate Guide to Free LLM APIs: From Forever-Free Tiers to Trial Credits – A Must-Have List for Developers

As large language models (LLMs) continue to explode in popularity, more and more developers want to integrate AI capabilities via API—fast. But for indie devs, students, and small teams, paid APIs can be a roadblock.

The good news? There are plenty of completely free, legitimate LLM API resources out there. Some even offer trial credits worth up to millions of tokens.

We’ve curated a strictly vetted list of free LLM API services—no reverse-engineered knockoffs, no shady wrappers. Whether you’re prototyping, building a side project, or just experimenting, this guide has you covered.

✅ All services listed are legal and above board.
⚠️ Please don’t abuse these free tiers—rate limits exist for a reason. Let’s keep this ecosystem alive.

⚠️ Before You Dive In

  • No abuse, please. Excessive traffic can kill free access for everyone.
  • Privacy matters. Some providers (e.g., Google AI Studio outside the EEA) use your data for training. Read their terms.
  • Phone verification is required by some platforms (NVIDIA, Mistral, NLP Cloud). This is a standard anti-abuse measure, not discrimination.

Part I: Permanently Free Providers (No Expiration)

These services offer ongoing free access with daily or per-minute rate limits—enough for most dev workflows and small-scale apps.

🌐 OpenRouter – 30+ Free Models, Shared Quota

🔗 openrouter.ai
Rate limits: 20 req/min, 50 req/day. Upgrade to 1000 req/day after $10 lifetime top-up.

OpenRouter aggregates dozens of models. Free tier quota is shared across all free models.

Notable free models:

  • Gemma 3 (4B, 12B, 27B Instruct)
  • Llama 3.1/3.2/3.3 (including 405B)
  • Mistral Small 3.1 24B
  • Qwen 2.5 VL 7B (vision)
  • Community favorites: Dolphin, Trinity, Kimi K2, Solar Pro

Best for: Model comparison, chatbots, lightweight integration.

🧠 Google AI Studio – Massive Gemini Context, Free

🔗 aistudio.google.com
⚠️ Data usage note: Outside the UK, Switzerland, EEA, and EU, your prompts may be used for training.

Model Daily Requests Req/min Tokens/min
Gemini 3 / 2.5 Flash 20 5 250k
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite 20 10 250k
Gemma 3 (all sizes) 14.4k 30 15k

Gemini Flash models support 1M token context—ideal for long-document analysis and deep multi-turn conversations.

🎮 NVIDIA NIM – Enterprise-Grade Inference, Free Tier

🔗 build.nvidia.com
Limits: 40 req/min, phone verification required.
Models: Optimized versions of Llama 3, Mistral, Qwen, Phi, and more.
Best for: Low-latency, production-ready inference.

🇫🇷 Mistral AI – Open & Proprietary Models

La Plateforme (Experimental Plan)

  • Limits: 1 req/sec, 500k tokens/min, 1B tokens/month
  • Requires: Phone number + opt-in for data training
  • Models: Mistral 7B, Mixtral 8x22B, Codestral, Mathstral, etc.

Codestral (Code-Focused)

  • Limits: 30 req/min, 2000 req/day
  • Model: Codestral (code generation/completion)
  • Status: Currently free; subscription model upcoming.

🤗 HuggingFace Inference Providers

🔗 hf.co/docs/inference-providers
Free credit: $0.10/month—enough for small experiments.
Models: All HuggingFace models under 10GB; some larger models supported via partners.
Best for: Testing thousands of open-source models instantly.

⚡ Vercel AI Gateway – Unified Proxy with Free Allowance

🔗 vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway
Free credit: $5/month (gateway fees only).
What it does: Routes requests to OpenAI, Anthropic, Cohere, etc. No model cost—just proxy usage.

🚀 Cerebras – Blazing Speed, Generous Quotas

🔗 cloud.cerebras.ai

Model Daily Requests Tokens/min Notes
gpt-oss-120b 14.4k 60k
Qwen 3 235B 14.4k 60k
Llama 3.3 70B 14.4k 64k
Z.ai GLM-4.6 100 60k 10 req/min

Cerebras runs on wafer-scale engines—inference is incredibly fast, and the free tier is one of the most generous.

🔥 Groq – LPU™ Speed, Vision & Audio Included

🔗 console.groq.com

  • Llama 3.3 70B: 1k req/day, 12k tokens/min
  • Llama 4 Maverick/Scout: 1k req/day, 6k–30k tokens/min
  • Whisper Large v3/v3 Turbo: 2k req/day, 7200 audio sec/min
  • Moonshot Kimi K2, OpenAI OSS series also free.

Best for: Real-time transcription, ultra-low-latency generation.

🐦 Cohere – Multilingual & RAG-Ready

🔗 cohere.com
Limits: 20 req/min, 1000 req/month (shared across models).
Models:

  • Aya Expanse 8B/32B (multilingual)
  • Command A/R/R+ (enterprise)
  • Command R7B (Arabic-optimized)

🧑‍💻 GitHub Models – Copilot Users, This One’s for You

🔗 github.com/marketplace/models
Limits: Tied to Copilot subscription (Free/Pro/Enterprise). Strict token caps.
Model highlights:

  • OpenAI GPT-4.1, GPT-4o, o1, o3, o4-mini (some in preview)
  • Grok 3, Llama 4, DeepSeek-V3, Phi-4
  • Mistral Small 3.1, Ministral 3B

If you already use Copilot, this is your zero-cost gateway to cutting-edge closed models.

☁️ Cloudflare Workers AI – Inference at the Edge

🔗 developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai
Free quota: 10,000 neurons/day (1 neuron ≈ 1/128 of a request).
Models: 50+ including:

  • Gemma 3 12B, Llama 3.3 70B, Llama 4 Scout
  • Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B, DeepSeek R1, Mistral Small 3.1
  • Vision: Llama 3.2 11B Vision, Qwen 2.5 VL

Best for: Serverless apps, edge AI, Cloudflare-native stacks.

🧱 Google Cloud Vertex AI – Free During Preview

🔗 console.cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/model-garden
Limits (preview):

  • Llama 3.2 90B Vision: 30 req/min
  • Llama 3.1 70B/8B: 60 req/min
    Note: Requires billing setup, but no charges during preview.

Part II: Providers with Trial Credits (Limited Time / Usage)

These platforms offer free credits upon signup—typically 30. No surprise billing; access stops when credits run out.

Provider Credits Duration Models / Notes
Fireworks $1 N/A Wide range of open models
Baseten $30 N/A Deploy any model, pay per compute
Nebius $1 N/A Open models
Novita $0.50 1 year Open models
AI21 $10 3 months Jamba 1.5 series
Upstage $10 3 months Solar Pro / Mini
NLP Cloud $15 N/A Phone verification required
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio 1M tokens/model N/A Qwen family
Modal 30 (+payment) Monthly Any model, GPU compute
Inference.net 25 N/A Open models; $25 via survey
Hyperbolic $1 N/A DeepSeek V3, Llama 405B, Qwen 235B
SambaNova Cloud $5 3 months Llama 4, DeepSeek V3.1, Qwen 3
Scaleway Generative APIs 1M tokens N/A Gemma 3 27B, Pixtral, Voxtral, etc.

Pro tips:

  • Modal and Baseten are compute platforms—use credits to run any model you want.
  • Hyperbolic and SambaNova offer early access to cutting-edge models like DeepSeek-V3.1 and Qwen 3 235B.
  • Scaleway (EU-based) features unique models like devstral and voxtral—great for multilingual or European projects.

Final Thoughts: How to Pick the Right Free API for You

  1. Want a single key to many models? → OpenRouter is your best bet.
  2. Need massive context windows? → Google AI Studio (Gemini Flash) is unmatched.
  3. Speed is your top priority? → Groq or Cerebras deliver near-instant inference.
  4. Already have Copilot? → GitHub Models unlocks GPT-4.1/o3 and more—at no extra cost.
  5. Building for production on a budget? → Mistral or Cohere offer generous monthly quotas.
  6. Privacy-first or EU-based? → Scaleway and Cloudflare are solid choices.

A final word:
These free resources exist because the community respects them. Don’t scrape, don’t resell, don’t abuse.
If we play fair, we all win.

Happy building — and may your tokens always be plentiful. 🚀

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