Free AI API Access
Providers that hand out free API keys or credits so you can build with LLMs in your projects at no cost.
alternatives (9)
★ Google AI Studio (Gemini)
Best for: The most generous free start
Get a free Gemini API key in a click, with a generous free tier for prototyping.
- +Free API key instantly
- +Generous limits
- +Multimodal
- −Free-tier rate limits
OpenRouter
Best for: One key, many models (some free)
One API key for hundreds of models — including several that are free to call.
- +Some models free
- +One API
- +Easy comparison
- −Paid for premium models
Mistral (La Plateforme)
Best for: Open-weight models with a free tier
Free tier API for Mistral's open-weight and frontier models.
- +Free tier
- +Open-weight options
- −Smaller ecosystem
NVIDIA Build
Best for: Sampling many hosted models
Free API credits to try a large catalog of models (NIM) before self-hosting.
- +Free credits
- +Big model catalog
- −Credits expire
Groq
Best for: Fast, free inference
Free API tier with extremely fast inference on open models.
- +Very fast
- +Free tier
- +OpenAI-compatible
- −Limited model list
Cohere
Best for: Embeddings & RAG
Free trial API keys, strong for retrieval, embeddings, and RAG.
- +Free trial keys
- +Great embeddings
- −Trial rate limits
Together AI
Best for: Open models in the cloud
Cloud inference for open models — free credits for new accounts and competitive pricing on Llama, Qwen, and more.
- +Free starter credits
- +Many open models
- +Fast inference
- −Credits expire
Hugging Face
Best for: Try any open model via API
Serverless inference API for thousands of open models — free tier for prototyping with community models.
- +Huge model catalog
- +Free tier
- +Open models
- −Rate limits on free tier
DeepSeek
Best for: Cheap reasoning models
Low-cost API for DeepSeek models — generous free credits for new developers and strong reasoning models.
- +Low cost
- +Strong reasoning
- +Free credits
- −China-based provider
Compare
Tick the ones you want to compare
| Alternative | Free offer | Models | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| ★Google AI Studio (Gemini) | Free API key + tier | Gemini | Prototyping for free |
| OpenRouter | Free models + credits | Many (one API) | Trying many models |
| Mistral (La Plateforme) | Free tier | Mistral | Open-weight models |
| NVIDIA Build | Free credits | Many (NIM) | Evaluating models |
| Groq | Free tier | Llama, Mixtral, etc. | Low-latency apps |
| Cohere | Trial keys | Command / Embed | Search & RAG |
| Together AI | Starter credits | Llama, Qwen, etc. | Open-weight cloud API |
| Hugging Face | Free tier | 1000s of open models | Experimenting with OSS models |
| DeepSeek | Free credits | DeepSeek-V3 / R1 | Reasoning on a budget |
New to API keys and tokens? These providers let you start for free. Google AI Studio (Gemini) is the easiest generous start; OpenRouter gives one key for many models. Together AI, Hugging Face, and DeepSeek expand open-model access. Groq for speed, Cohere for embeddings, Mistral and NVIDIA Build for evaluation. Compare free tiers, then pick.