Compare 32 free alternatives to OpenAI for AI / ML. Every one of their free tier limits side by side, with the read and catalogue dates we hold.

Best OpenAI Alternatives with Free Tiers (2026)

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

Current OpenAI Situation

Risk Level: source unconfirmed
Why: Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. We do not rate an offer we do not list. We are not publishing a stability judgement for it until that is fixed.
Category: AI / ML

Recent Pricing Changes (7)

deprecated effective 2026-10-23 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-3.5-turbo, gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo, gpt-4-1106-preview, gpt-4.1-nano, gpt-4o-2024-05-13, gpt-image-1, o1, o1-pro, o3-mini and o4-mini models, with their fine-tuned versions, can be called until October 23, 2026, when OpenAI shuts down their access. OpenAI names a substitute for each model: gpt-3.5-turbo to gpt-5.6-terra; gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo, gpt-4-1106-preview and gpt-4o-2024-05-13 to gpt-5.6-sol; gpt-4.1-nano to gpt-5.6-luna; gpt-image-1 to gpt-image-2.5-sunburst or gpt-image-2.5-flare; o1 to gpt-5.6-sol; o1-pro to gpt-5.6-sol with reasoning.mode: pro; o3-mini to gpt-5.6-sol; o4-mini to gpt-5.6-terra. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2026-09-28 low impact
gpt-3.5-turbo-instruct, babbage-002, davinci-002 and gpt-3.5-turbo-1106 shut down in the OpenAI API on September 28, 2026. OpenAI names gpt-5.6-terra as the replacement. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2026-09-24 medium impact
Sora 2 video generation in the OpenAI API shut down on September 24, 2026: OpenAI removed the Videos API and the sora-2 and sora-2-pro models, and names no replacement. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2026-08-26 high impact
Assistants API deprecated, full shutdown August 26, 2026. Developers must migrate to Responses API + Conversations API Source ↗
deprecated effective 2026-05-12 high impact
dall-e-2 and dall-e-3 were removed from the OpenAI API on 2026-05-12. OpenAI names gpt-image-2, gpt-image-1 or gpt-image-1-mini as substitutes, and gpt-image-1 itself shuts down on 2026-10-23. Source ↗

Upcoming Changes (11)

These are announced changes that have not taken effect yet, listed soonest first.

deprecated effective 2026-11-30 low impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. Agent Builder, the Evals platform and the v1/prompts API can be used until November 30, 2026. Existing evals become read-only on October 31, 2026. ChatKit remains available. Migrate from Agent Builder to the Agents SDK or ChatGPT Workspace Agents. Migrate from Evals to Promptfoo. Move reusable prompt content into application code. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2026-12-01 low impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-image-1-mini, gpt-image-1.5 and chatgpt-image-latest models can be called until December 1, 2026. OpenAI's substitutes are gpt-image-2.6-sunburst or gpt-image-2.6-flare. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2026-12-11 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. gpt-5-2025-08-07 is available until December 11, 2026, replaced by gpt-5.6-sol. gpt-5-mini-2025-08-07 is available until December 11, 2026, replaced by gpt-5.6-terra. gpt-5-nano-2025-08-07 is available until December 11, 2026, replaced by gpt-5.6-luna. gpt-5-pro-2025-10-06 is available until December 11, 2026, replaced by gpt-5.6-sol with reasoning.mode: pro. o3-2025-04-16 is available until December 11, 2026, replaced by gpt-5.6-sol. o3-pro-2025-06-10 is available until December 11, 2026, replaced by gpt-5.6-sol with reasoning.mode: pro. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-01-06 low impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The tts-1, tts-1-hd, gpt-4o-mini-tts-2025-03-20 and gpt-4o-mini-tts-2025-12-15 models can be called until January 6, 2027. OpenAI's replacement for each: gpt-realtime-2.1-mini. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-01-06 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. From January 6, 2027, no organization can create new fine-tuning jobs on OpenAI's self-serve fine-tuning platform. Since May 7, 2026, organizations that never ran fine-tuning cannot create jobs. Since July 2, 2026, organizations that have not run inference on a fine-tuned model in the past 60 days cannot either. Fine-tuned models keep serving inference until their base model is deprecated. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-01-14 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-4o (gpt-4o-2024-08-06 and gpt-4o-2024-11-20), gpt-4o-mini, gpt-4.1 and gpt-4.1-mini models, with their fine-tuned versions, can be called until January 14, 2027, when OpenAI shuts down their access. OpenAI names gpt-6-luna as the replacement for all four. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-01-20 low impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-realtime, gpt-4o-realtime, gpt-realtime-mini, gpt-4o-mini-realtime, gpt-audio, gpt-4o-audio, gpt-audio-mini, gpt-4o-mini-audio and gpt-4o-mini-transcribe-2025-03-20 models can be called until January 20, 2027. OpenAI's substitutes: gpt-realtime-2.1 for gpt-realtime and gpt-4o-realtime; gpt-realtime-2.1-mini for gpt-realtime-mini and gpt-4o-mini-realtime; gpt-audio-1.5 for gpt-audio, gpt-4o-audio, gpt-audio-mini and gpt-4o-mini-audio; gpt-4o-mini-transcribe-2025-12-15 for gpt-4o-mini-transcribe-2025-03-20. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-02-01 low impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-5.5-cyber-preview model can be called until February 1, 2027, when OpenAI removes it from the API. OpenAI tells users to move to the most capable cyber model available to them. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-02-10 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-image-2 model and its gpt-image-2-2026-04-21 snapshot can be called until February 10, 2027, when OpenAI removes them from the API. OpenAI names gpt-image-2.6-sunburst or gpt-image-2.6-flare as the replacement. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-02-26 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The whisper-1, gpt-4o-transcribe, gpt-4o-mini-transcribe and gpt-4o-transcribe-diarize models can be called until February 26, 2027. OpenAI's substitute for each is gpt-live-transcribe or gpt-transcribe. The /v1/audio/translations endpoint also shuts down on February 26, 2027. OpenAI's replacement is /v1/realtime/translations. Source ↗
deprecated effective 2027-04-01 medium impact
The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-5.3-codex, gpt-5.1 and gpt-5.4-nano models can be called until April 1, 2027. OpenAI's replacements: gpt-6-sol for gpt-5.3-codex and gpt-5.1; gpt-6-luna for gpt-5.4-nano. Source ↗
📖 In-depth migration guide available

Read our detailed OpenAI Assistants API Sunset: Migration Cost Guide & Alternatives guide with curated recommendations and service comparison.

Recommended Migration Targets

These alternatives were identified from OpenAI’s pricing changes as recommended replacements.

Google Gemini API stable recommended
Free (Reduced)
Free tier: Gemini 4 Hydrogen, Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Also free of charge are Gemini 3.8 Live (real-time voice), Gemini 3.5 Live Translate (translation), Gemini 3.5 Transcribe…
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-09
Lumenfall.ai stable recommended
Free
AI media gateway: one OpenAI-compatible API to image and video generation models from several providers, billed at each provider's price with no markup, platform fee or subscription. One model, FLUX.1 [schnell] FP8, is listed free per image ("Free to try", served through Fireworks AI).
AI / ML Read 2026-11-12 · confirmed 2026-10-21
Groq caution 2026-10-06 reduced recommended
Free
Fast LLM inference on Groq's LPU hardware. Free plan: gpt-oss-20b, gpt-oss-120b and Qwen3.8 27B, each at 30 requests a minute, 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day, plus Whisper speech-to-text at 2,000 requests a day.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-26 · confirmed 2026-10-03
Free
Workers AI runs AI models on Cloudflare's global network. Every account gets 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge, reset daily at 00:00 UTC; on the Workers Free plan, requests beyond that fail until the reset.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-31 · confirmed 2026-10-06
ElevenLabs stable recommended
Free
Free plan at $0 per month: 10,000 credits per month and 3 Projects in Studio, with Text to Speech, Speech to Text, Sound Effects, Voice Design, Music, Productions and Image. No commercial licence on the free plan — that starts at Starter, $6 per month for 30,000 credits.
AI / ML Read 2026-11-05 · confirmed 2026-10-08
Pollinations.AI caution 2026-07-10 reduced recommended
Free
Keyless Classic API: one image model and GPT-OSS 20B text, free, no sign-up, rate-limited per IP. Every other model needs an API key and Pollen, and free Pollen comes only from quests.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-31
AssemblyAI stable recommended
Free Credits
Speech-to-text and Speech Understanding API. New accounts get $50 in free credits with no credit card required; the credits do not expire and cover pre-recorded and streaming speech-to-text, the Voice Agent API, Speech Understanding and Guardrails, but not LLM Gateway.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-12
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Stability AI stable recommended
Free Credits
Developer Platform API is credit-priced at 1 credit = $0.01, with 25 free credits to start — a one-time $0.25 grant, not a monthly allowance. Per-image costs: SDXL 1.0 from 0.9 credits, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Flash 2.5, Stable Image Core 3, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium 3.5, Large 6.5, Stable Image…
AI / ML Read 2026-11-06 · confirmed 2026-10-08
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Replicate stable recommended
Trial
ML model hosting and inference. A new account can run the models in Replicate's Try for Free collection without buying credit, for a limited number of runs that Replicate does not state; after that you add billing and buy credit.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-24 · confirmed 2026-10-01
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Trial" is a trial that expires, not an ongoing free tier.
Deepgram stable recommended
Free Credits
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech API — $200 free credits on signup (no credit card required), ~43K minutes transcription with Nova model, credits never expire. Access to all model endpoints
  • Deepgram's docs say only data included through its Model Improvement Partnership Program is stored and used for future model training. Adding mip_opt_out=true to a request excludes it, and opted-out request data is kept only while the request is processed. (From developers.deepgram.com/docs/the-deepgram-model-improvement-partnership-program, read 2026-10-23.)
  • Nova-3 speech-to-text allows up to 50 concurrent pre-recorded requests and up to 150 concurrent streaming requests. (From developers.deepgram.com/reference/api-rate-limits, read 2026-10-23.)
  • A transcription request without enough credits fails with HTTP 402 Payment Required, with the message "Project does not have enough credits for an ASR request and does not have an overage agreement." (From developers.deepgram.com/docs/errors, read 2026-10-23.)
  • Rate limits apply per project, not per account or API key. Creating additional projects under the same account does not grant additional concurrency. Secondary projects on a self-serve account are limited to a single concurrent stream. Using additional projects or accounts to work around the limits is detected and violates Deepgram's Terms of Service. (From developers.deepgram.com/reference/api-rate-limits, read 2026-11-07.)
  • Deepgram's terms, section 2.4, forbid use of the Services or any Output "for competitive purposes, including model training, benchmarking and other competitive analysis, or developing competing models, products or services". (From deepgram.com/terms, read 2026-11-07.)
  • Deepgram's terms, section 2.4, prohibit resale or redistribution of the Services on a stand-alone basis. Integration into the user's own Application is allowed when the Application contributes material independent functionality beyond Deepgram's Services. (From deepgram.com/terms, read 2026-11-07.)
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-26
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.

All Free Alternatives (32)

14 of these carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold; their order rotates daily. 10 are demoted with the reason named, and 8 are listed last because they are not generally available or are not a free offer. How we rank.

Left out of this list: Brave Search API (shares no subtype with this product), Pinecone (shares no subtype with this product), 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), 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), Google Colab (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), SerpApi (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), ReportGPT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Zenable (none of this category's subtypes apply), 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), Google Gemini Embedding 2 (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), Daytona (shares no subtype with this product), Blaxel (shares no subtype with this product), Novita Sandbox (shares no subtype with this product), Runloop (shares no subtype with this product), Mem0 (shares no subtype with this product), Zep (shares no subtype with this product), Letta (we have not classified this record), Supermemory (shares no subtype with this product), Cognee (shares no subtype with this product), Serper (shares no subtype with this product), Linkup (shares no subtype with this product), Parallel (shares no subtype with this product), Jina AI (shares no subtype with this product), You.com (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare AI Search (we have not classified this record), Valyu (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.

Free (Reduced)
Free tier: Gemini 4 Hydrogen, Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Also free of charge are Gemini 3.8 Live (real-time voice), Gemini 3.5 Live Translate (translation), Gemini 3.5 Transcribe…
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-09
Maxim AI stable
Free
Simulate, evaluate, and observe your AI agents — The 'OSS' tier is free forever for developers, small teams, and self-managed deployments. It includes features like a drop-in replacement, OTel compatibility, metrics & traces, built-in observability, budget management, and more.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-29
Lumenfall.ai stable
Free
AI media gateway: one OpenAI-compatible API to image and video generation models from several providers, billed at each provider's price with no markup, platform fee or subscription. One model, FLUX.1 [schnell] FP8, is listed free per image ("Free to try", served through Fireworks AI).
AI / ML Read 2026-11-12 · confirmed 2026-10-21
NVIDIA NIM stable
Free
Free inference endpoints on build.nvidia.com: models marked Free Endpoint, including DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, GLM 5.3 Flash, gpt-oss-20b, Gemma 4 31B and NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra, can be called at no cost. Their model IDs are deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4.1-flash, z-ai/glm-5.3-flash, openai/gpt-oss-20b,…
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-02
Free
Hetzner's experimental Inference API: an OpenAI-compatible API for open-weight models, free while it stays experimental. Base URL: https://inference.hetzner.com/api/v1.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-31
Cohere stable
Free
AI model API for Command chat models, Embed, Rerank, Transcribe and Parse. Every account starts with a Trial API key: calls made with it are free and limited to 1,000 API calls a month.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-26 · catalogue date 2026-08-16
Free
ML model hub. Since 2026-10-07, free accounts get no included Inference Providers credits: free users buy credits or upgrade to PRO to call Inference Providers, which serves 200+ models.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-30 · confirmed 2026-10-05
Free
Fast LLM inference on Groq's LPU hardware. Free plan: gpt-oss-20b, gpt-oss-120b and Qwen3.8 27B, each at 30 requests a minute, 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day, plus Whisper speech-to-text at 2,000 requests a day.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-26 · confirmed 2026-10-03
Free
Workers AI runs AI models on Cloudflare's global network. Every account gets 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge, reset daily at 00:00 UTC; on the Workers Free plan, requests beyond that fail until the reset.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-31 · confirmed 2026-10-06
Free
LLM inference gateway. With a free token from dash.llm7.io: 1 request a second, 60 a minute, 250 an hour and 100,000 tokens per 24 hours, counting input and output tokens; LLM7 says free quotas may be reduced without notice.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-31
Free
Rebranded to Respan; keywordsai.co redirects to respan.ai. Free plan: full platform, 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators, 5 prompts.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-06 · tried again 2026-10-31 and did not read the page
ElevenLabs stable
Free
Free plan at $0 per month: 10,000 credits per month and 3 Projects in Studio, with Text to Speech, Speech to Text, Sound Effects, Voice Design, Music, Productions and Image. No commercial licence on the free plan — that starts at Starter, $6 per month for 30,000 credits.
AI / ML Read 2026-11-05 · confirmed 2026-10-08
Free
Keyless Classic API: one image model and GPT-OSS 20B text, free, no sign-up, rate-limited per IP. Every other model needs an API key and Pollen, and free Pollen comes only from quests.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-31
OpenRouter stable
Free
AI model router. Free plan: 50 requests a day, no BYOK.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-06
Free
Control panel for Gen AI apps featuring an observability suite & an AI gateway. Send & log up to 10,000 requests for free every month.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-24 · catalogue date 2026-08-12
−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-24, found the page different from the terms we hold. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.
Free
China-based GLM model API. The price list marks these models free: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4-Flash-250414 and GLM-Z1-Flash (text); GLM-4.6V-Flash, GLM-4V-Flash and GLM-4.1V-Thinking-Flash (vision); CogView-3-Flash (image); CogVideoX-Flash (video).
AI / ML Read 2026-10-30 · catalogue date 2026-08-20
−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 2 consecutive re-check attempts have failed (most recently 2026-10-30 — the page never names Zhipu AI and is not served from its domain), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.
Free
Pay-as-you-go model inference. siliconflow.cn, run by a Beijing company, lists these models at no charge: the chat models Qwen3-8B, Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct (Free), Qwen3.5-4B, GLM-4-9B-0414, GLM-Z1-9B-0414, DeepSeek-R1-0528-Qwen3-8B (Free) and Xing4.0-29B; the translation model Hunyuan-MT-7B; the OCR…
AI / ML Read 2026-11-02 · catalogue date 2026-08-20
−1 stale_verification We cannot confirm this offer: 1 consecutive re-check attempt has failed (most recently 2026-11-02 — Could not parse AI response), never confirmed since it was indexed. This is our inability to verify, not a change by the vendor.
AssemblyAI stable
Free Credits
Speech-to-text and Speech Understanding API. New accounts get $50 in free credits with no credit card required; the credits do not expire and cover pre-recorded and streaming speech-to-text, the Voice Agent API, Speech Understanding and Guardrails, but not LLM Gateway.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-12
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Stability AI stable
Free Credits
Developer Platform API is credit-priced at 1 credit = $0.01, with 25 free credits to start — a one-time $0.25 grant, not a monthly allowance. Per-image costs: SDXL 1.0 from 0.9 credits, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Flash 2.5, Stable Image Core 3, Stable Diffusion 3.5 Medium 3.5, Large 6.5, Stable Image…
AI / ML Read 2026-11-06 · confirmed 2026-10-08
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Free Credits
Inference platform for open models, with serverless per-token pricing and on-demand GPU deployments billed per GPU second. Fireworks offers $1 in free credits to get started.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-28 · catalogue date 2026-08-25
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Replicate stable
Trial
ML model hosting and inference. A new account can run the models in Replicate's Try for Free collection without buying credit, for a limited number of runs that Replicate does not state; after that you add billing and buy credit.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-24 · confirmed 2026-10-01
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Trial" is a trial that expires, not an ongoing free tier.
Deepgram stable
Free Credits
Speech-to-text and text-to-speech API — $200 free credits on signup (no credit card required), ~43K minutes transcription with Nova model, credits never expire. Access to all model endpoints
  • Deepgram's docs say only data included through its Model Improvement Partnership Program is stored and used for future model training. Adding mip_opt_out=true to a request excludes it, and opted-out request data is kept only while the request is processed. (From developers.deepgram.com/docs/the-deepgram-model-improvement-partnership-program, read 2026-10-23.)
  • Nova-3 speech-to-text allows up to 50 concurrent pre-recorded requests and up to 150 concurrent streaming requests. (From developers.deepgram.com/reference/api-rate-limits, read 2026-10-23.)
  • A transcription request without enough credits fails with HTTP 402 Payment Required, with the message "Project does not have enough credits for an ASR request and does not have an overage agreement." (From developers.deepgram.com/docs/errors, read 2026-10-23.)
  • Rate limits apply per project, not per account or API key. Creating additional projects under the same account does not grant additional concurrency. Secondary projects on a self-serve account are limited to a single concurrent stream. Using additional projects or accounts to work around the limits is detected and violates Deepgram's Terms of Service. (From developers.deepgram.com/reference/api-rate-limits, read 2026-11-07.)
  • Deepgram's terms, section 2.4, forbid use of the Services or any Output "for competitive purposes, including model training, benchmarking and other competitive analysis, or developing competing models, products or services". (From deepgram.com/terms, read 2026-11-07.)
  • Deepgram's terms, section 2.4, prohibit resale or redistribution of the Services on a stand-alone basis. Integration into the user's own Application is allowed when the Application contributes material independent functionality beyond Deepgram's Services. (From deepgram.com/terms, read 2026-11-07.)
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-26
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
Basic (Free Credits)
ML model deployment platform. New workspaces receive credits for testing and deployment; Baseten does not state the amount.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-29 · catalogue date 2026-08-01
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Basic (Free Credits)" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.
−1 stale_verification Our last read of the vendor's pricing page, on 2026-10-29, found the page different from the terms we hold. This is our confidence in the record, not a change by the vendor.
Trial
Ultra-fast LLM inference API — no permanent free tier. New accounts get $5 in free credits after adding a verified payment method, expiring 30 days after they are granted.
AI / ML Read 2026-10-26 · confirmed 2026-10-03
−3 free_tier_withdrawn Recorded free tier removal on 2026-07-16: Cerebras's free access became a time- and credit-bounded trial for new accounts: $5 in credits after adding a verified payment method, expiring 30 days after they are granted. Cerebras says there is no permanently free tier; continued use needs a Pay as You Go purchase. Source: https://inference-docs.cerebras.ai/support/change-log
−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Trial" is a trial that expires, not an ongoing free tier.
Retired
GitHub retired GitHub Models on 2026-07-30, so there is no free tier. GitHub's own documentation states "GitHub Models has been retired."
AI / ML Read 2026-11-02 · catalogue date 2026-08-20
offer_retired GitHub Models's offer is recorded as Retired.
Pay-as-you-go
Pay-as-you-go LLM API with no free tier, billed from a prepaid balance. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (deepseek-flash): $0.30/M input, $1.20/M output at peak.
AI / ML Read 2026-11-02 · catalogue date 2026-08-18
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
Inference API for open-source models, billed per token. Together AI does not currently offer free trials; access requires a minimum $15 credit purchase for an organization's first purchase ($5 for later purchases), and the platform is fully prepaid.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-10-26
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
xAI
Pay-as-you-go
Grok API, pay as you go: sign up at console.x.ai, then load it with credits. grok-4.7 $2.00/$6.00 (per 1M tokens, under 200k prompt tokens).
AI / ML Read 2026-11-02 · catalogue date 2026-08-14
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
Since about 2026-11-05, Mistral's Free plan covers Vibe and Studio and does not include API access. Creating API keys and calling the API require billing activation and pay-as-you-go with prepaid credits.
AI / ML Read 2026-11-02 · catalogue date 2026-10-01
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
Claude API with usage-based pricing per million tokens (input/output). Claude Fable 5.2 $8/$40.
AI / ML Read 2026-11-11 · catalogue date 2026-08-15
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
MiniMax sells API access pay-as-you-go on platform.minimax.io. Its pricing pages list no free API allowance; one docs page mentions a free quota for new pay-as-you-go users but gives no amount.
AI / ML Read 2026-11-02 · catalogue date 2026-07-09
not_a_free_offer Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request.
Pay-as-you-go
Cloud-hosted Ollama for running open-source LLMs. Between October 26 and 27, 2026, Ollama replaced its Free plan, which included starter usage credits, with a $0 Pay as you go plan.
AI / ML Read and confirmed 2026-11-02
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
2026-11-14
query_key
alternative-to:OpenAI
seed
bcb7f16d77485670c544805d64bae1923f2bfb19ae11f7f7d5a0be12d2d18e3f
tie_count
14

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Frequently Asked Questions

What are the best free alternatives to OpenAI?
We publish no ranking of these. Nothing we record measures popularity or generosity, so naming a best or a top few would be our preference rather than our data. We hold 32 free alternatives to OpenAI, each listed below with its tier, category and the read and catalogue dates we hold. Of those, 14 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 10 are demoted with the reason named, 8 are listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.
Is OpenAI's free tier still available?
Tier "Pay-as-you-go" is usage-billed from the first request. AI API platform. One model is priced Free in OpenAI's own table: the moderation model omni-moderation-latest. No GPT model is priced free. GPT prices per 1M tokens (Standard, short context): gpt-6-ast...
How many free alternatives to OpenAI exist?
There are 32 free alternatives to OpenAI tracked on AgentDeals across the AI / ML category.
Has OpenAI changed their pricing?
OpenAI has 18 recorded pricing changes. The most recent was on 2026-10-23: The OpenAI API keeps running. The gpt-3.5-turbo, gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo, gpt-4-1106-preview, gpt-4.1-nano, gpt-4o-2024-05-13, gpt-image-1, o1, o1-pro, o3-mini and o4-mini models, with their fine-tuned versions, can be called until October 23, 2026, when OpenAI shuts down their access. OpenAI names a substitute for each model: gpt-3.5-turbo to gpt-5.6-terra; gpt-4, gpt-4-turbo, gpt-4-1106-preview and gpt-4o-2024-05-13 to gpt-5.6-sol; gpt-4.1-nano to gpt-5.6-luna; gpt-image-1 to gpt-image-2.5-sunburst or gpt-image-2.5-flare; o1 to gpt-5.6-sol; o1-pro to gpt-5.6-sol with reasoning.mode: pro; o3-mini to gpt-5.6-sol; o4-mini to gpt-5.6-terra. Source: https://developers.openai.com/api/docs/deprecations