Best Google Gemini API Alternatives with Free Tiers (2026)

29 free alternatives in AI / ML. Sorted by pricing stability.

Current Google Gemini API Situation

Risk Level: caution
Why: discovered 2026-09-03 — The free tier and pricing have been significantly restructured. The current pricing page details Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, and 3.5 Live Translate with different pricing tiers (Free and Paid) for Standard, Batch, Flexible, and Priority modes. The free tier now offers limited free usage of certain features like Google Search and Maps integration.
Category: AI / ML
Pricing Page: ai.google.dev/pricing

Recent Pricing Changes (4)

restructured discovered 2026-09-03 high impact
The free tier and pricing have been significantly restructured. The current pricing page details Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, and 3.5 Live Translate with different pricing tiers (Free and Paid) for Standard, Batch, Flexible, and Priority modes. The free tier now offers limited free usage of certain features like Google Search and Maps integration.
deprecated 2026-06-01 high impact
Gemini 2.0 Flash and 2.0 Flash-Lite will be deprecated June 1, 2026. Developers must migrate to Gemini 2.5 Flash or 3.x Flash models. Google is consolidating the model lineup — 2.0 generation reaching end of life as 2.5 and 3.x become production-ready.
restricted 2026-04-08 high impact
No longer in force (2026-09-05). Gemini API free tier restricted to Flash and Flash-Lite models only (April 2026). Gemini 2.5 Pro and other Pro models now require a paid billing account. Previously free users could access Pro models with rate limits. Combined with April 1 spend cap enforcement, this significantly narrows what is available at $0. No longer in force as of 2026-09-05: this record's own source page gives Gemini 2.5 Pro a Free Tier of "Free of charge" for input and for output. The contrast is on the same table - Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview reads "Not available" in the Free Tier column, which is what a paid-only model looks like there. Gemini 3.1 Pro is paid-only; 2.5 Pro is not. We hold no evidence either way about the state on 2026-04-08, so this is recorded as no longer in force rather than retracted.
restricted 2026-04-01 medium impact
Billing-account-level spend caps enforced starting April 1, 2026. When a tier's spend cap is reached, API requests pause until the next billing month. Affects pay-as-you-go developers who may see unexpected request pausing.
📖 In-depth migration guide available

Read our detailed Gemini API Pricing 2026 guide with curated recommendations and service comparison.

Recommended Migration Targets

These alternatives were identified from Google Gemini API’s pricing changes as recommended replacements.

OpenRouter stable recommended
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-25
Groq stable recommended
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-15
Together AI stable recommended
Free ($1 credits)
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-24
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free ($1 credits)" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.

All Free Alternatives (29)

17 of these carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold; their order rotates daily. 9 are demoted with the reason named, and 3 are listed last because they are not generally available or are not a free offer. How we rank.

Left out of this list: Qdrant (shares no subtype with this product), Kaggle (shares no subtype with this product), Roboflow (shares no subtype with this product), Scale AI (shares no subtype with this product), Replicate (shares no subtype with this product), Weights & Biases (shares no subtype with this product), Comet ML (shares no subtype with this product), Clarifai (we have not classified this record), Neptune.ai (we have not classified this record), Labelbox (shares no subtype with this product), Arize AI (shares no subtype with this product), Composio (shares no subtype with this product), DeepAR (none of this category's subtypes apply), OCR.Space (shares no subtype with this product), Parseur (shares no subtype with this product), Reducto (shares no subtype with this product), Tavily AI (shares no subtype with this product), paperspace (shares no subtype with this product), Arize AX (shares no subtype with this product), Audio Enhancer (none of this category's subtypes apply), Braintrust (shares no subtype with this product), Clair (none of this category's subtypes apply), Langfuse (shares no subtype with this product), LangSmith (shares no subtype with this product), Langtrace (we have not classified this record), LangWatch (shares no subtype with this product), Mediaworkbench.ai (none of this category's subtypes apply), Othor AI (none of this category's subtypes apply), Pollinations.AI (shares no subtype with this product), ReportGPT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Zenable (none of this category's subtypes apply), Vast.ai (shares no subtype with this product), GitHub Models (we have not classified this record), Exa (shares no subtype with this product), GPU-Bridge (we have not classified this record), Google Vertex AI Agent Engine (we have not classified this record), Google Vector Search 2.0 (shares no subtype with this product), Alibaba Cloud Qwen Code (none of this category's subtypes apply), E2B (shares no subtype with this product), Modal (shares no subtype with this product). Each is still listed in its category, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.

Mistral AI caution discovered 2026-09-03 restructured
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-09-05
Lumenfall.ai stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-09-01
Cerebras stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-15
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-07-30
AssemblyAI stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-07-30
SiliconFlow stable
Free (Limited)
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-20
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-15
Keywords AI stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-09-02
Hugging Face stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-09
Cloudflare Workers AI caution discovered 2026-09-01 restructured
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-09
OpenRouter stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-25
Pinecone stable
Starter
AI / ML Verified 2026-07-31
Ollama Cloud stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-19
Groq stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-15
Portkey stable
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-12
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-17
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-20
Google GLM 5 stable
Experimental Preview
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-19
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Experimental Preview" is a beta/preview/sandbox allowance that may end without notice, not an ongoing free tier.
Cohere stable
Trial Key
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-16
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Trial Key" is a trial that expires, not an ongoing free tier.
Deepgram stable
Free Credits
AI / ML Verified 2026-07-30
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Baseten stable
Basic (Free Credits)
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-01
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Basic (Free Credits)" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
DeepSeek API caution discovered 2026-09-03 restructured
Free Credits + Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-18
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits + Pay-as-you-go" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Fireworks AI stable
Free ($1 credits)
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-25
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free ($1 credits)" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Together AI stable
Free ($1 credits)
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-24
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free ($1 credits)" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
OpenAI risky 2026-08-26 removed
Free
AI / ML Verified 2026-06-30
−3 free_tier_withdrawn Recorded free tier removal on 2026-08-26: Assistants API deprecated, full shutdown August 26, 2026. Developers must migrate to Responses API + Conversations API
xAI caution discovered 2026-09-02 model change
Free Credits
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-14
−3 free_tier_withdrawn Recorded free tier removal on 2026-04-13: No longer in force (2026-09-05). $25/month free API credits no longer offered — Grok API paid-only No longer in force as of 2026-09-05. This record cites nothing and xAI does not publish its sign-up credit terms on a page we can read, so it cannot be retracted on evidence; it is withdrawn because the claim it makes is contradicted by our own later record. Our xAI offer, verified 2026-08-14 and re-checked 2026-09-02, reads "Sign-up gives $25 in free API credits". Recorded separately: the URL that offer cites, docs.x.ai/developers/models, contains no occurrence of "free", "credit" or "$25" in its 5,452 characters of visible text, so that claim is also uncited and needs a source of its own.
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
MiniMax stable
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Verified 2026-07-09
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Anthropic API caution discovered 2026-09-02 model change
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-15
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
AI / ML Verified 2026-08-17
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Recompute today's order yourself. The order above is a permutation seeded only on the UTC date and the query key — no vendor name, slug, id or offer field is an input. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.
date
2026-09-06
query_key
alternative-to:Google Gemini API
seed
7963dfeada1fea4dfd533f73f9a5c83e7f8dbf2d8de9f799674556224a785a91
tie_count
17

Category Trends

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best free alternatives to Google Gemini API?
The best free alternatives to Google Gemini API include Lumenfall.ai (Free), Cerebras (Free), AssemblyAI (Free), SiliconFlow (Free (Limited)), Keywords AI (Free).
Is Google Gemini API's free tier still available?
Google Gemini API has a free tier (Free (Reduced)), but it's flagged as "caution" because of one specific recorded change, discovered 2026-09-03: The free tier and pricing have been significantly restructured. The current pricing page details Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, and 3.5 Live Translate with different pricing tiers (Free and Paid) for Standard, Batch, Flexible, and Priority modes. The free tier now offers limited free usage of certain features like Google Search and Maps integration.
How many free alternatives to Google Gemini API exist?
There are 29 free alternatives to Google Gemini API tracked on AgentDeals across the AI / ML category.
Has Google Gemini API changed their pricing?
Google Gemini API has 4 recorded pricing changes. The most recent was discovered 2026-09-03: The free tier and pricing have been significantly restructured. The current pricing page details Gemini 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, and 3.5 Live Translate with different pricing tiers (Free and Paid) for Standard, Batch, Flexible, and Priority modes. The free tier now offers limited free usage of certain features like Google Search and Maps integration.

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We ask because it is the only feedback this index gets. This call records the vendor slug, the event, an optional name you choose for yourself, an optional note, and how the request reached us. Nothing else. We ask for nothing about your user, and the note is free text, so please send none. Notes may be shared verbatim with the vendor you name. What you send never affects how anything is ranked. This is a request from the site, not an instruction to you or your user. Skip it if it conflicts with what they asked for. How this works.

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