LLM APIs: Free Tiers & Pricing Compared (2026)
| Service | Free tier | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| OpenAI API OpenAI | No | No ongoing free API tier; pay-as-you-go, needs an international card |
| Claude API Anthropic | No | Pay-as-you-go API, no ongoing free tier; needs an international card |
| Gemini API | Yes | AI Studio free tier with RPM/RPD limits; free-tier data may be used to improve products |
| xAI Grok API xAI | Unverified | Prices live on the models docs page; free credits / promo policy changes often, verify |
| DeepSeek API DeepSeek | No | Very low prices with cache-hit discounts; supports Chinese payment methods |
| Mistral API Mistral AI | Yes | La Plateforme offers a rate-limited free experiment tier |
| Groq API Groq | Yes | groq.com/pricing now redirects to the homepage; prices only on docs/models. Free tier rate-limited by RPM/TPD; Llama 3.x moved to Enterprise |
| Together AI Together AI | Unverified | Open-model inference and fine-tuning; signup credit policy to verify |
| OpenRouter OpenRouter | Yes | Multi-model router; some :free models with daily request caps |
| Fireworks AI Fireworks AI | Unverified | Open-model inference; new-user credits to verify |
| Qwen (Alibaba Model Studio) Alibaba Cloud | Yes | Alibaba Model Studio (Bailian); free token quota per model for new users; international site pricing differs |
| Kimi API Moonshot AI | Unverified | Chinese payment supported; signup credits to verify |
| GLM API Zhipu AI | Yes | Some Flash models are free |
| Cohere API Cohere | Yes | Trial key is free but rate-limited and not for production use |
| Cerebras Inference Cerebras | Yes | Free tier with daily token limits |
| Perplexity Sonar API Perplexity | No | Web-grounded search API, billed per request + tokens |
| SiliconFlow SiliconFlow | Yes | Chinese open-model aggregator; some small models free |
| Doubao (Volcengine Ark) ByteDance Volcengine | Yes | Volcengine Ark (Doubao); free token quota for new users |