Every free embeddings api tier that clears our bar in 2026: 4 offers meet the criteria and 1 offer is demoted with a named reason. Our membership test: returns a vector for text or media so it can be compared to other vectors; the vector is the output, not a completion. We could not confirm today's terms for 1 of them, and on all 1 our own read did not confirm them. Each row says why.

Best Free Embeddings API Tools

Every free embeddings api tier that clears our bar today. Updated 2026-11-14. Our membership test: returns a vector for text or media so it can be compared to other vectors; the vector is the output, not a completion.

4 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 3 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 1 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page. They are listed in an order that rotates daily. Here is how that order is derived. There is no top slot here to sell.

Why trust this data? Every free tier is verified against the vendor's pricing page with dates tracked. We monitor 513 pricing changes and flag vendors that have reduced or removed free tiers. Rankings start every offer at zero and can only demote. There is no signal a vendor can acquire, lobby for, or buy — there is nothing to add. A record reaches a function page when its category names the function or when it carries a subtype label that names the function. Adding a label to a record publishes it here; removing one withdraws it. No page holds a list of vendors. See all 89 ai / ml offers →

Google Gemini API stable

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 (speech-to-text), Gemini 3.8 Flash TTS and Gemini 3.8 Flash-Lite TTS (text-to-speech). Gemini Decision (gemini-decision-1), released 2026-11-11, is a multimodal decision model available through the Decisions API. It answers yes/no, choice and rubric questions with probabilities and generates zero output tokens, so it has no output price; input is free of charge on the free tier with 10,000 requests per day, and $0.10 per million input tokens on the paid tier. Gemini 4 Hydrogen (gemini-4-hydrogen), released 2026-11-12, is free of charge on the Gemini API free tier for input, output and context caching. On the paid tier, Gemini 4 Hydrogen costs $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens (output includes thinking tokens), with context caching at $0.075 (implicit caching only); on the Batch API, Gemini 4 Hydrogen is $0.75 input and $3.75 output. The other Gemini 4 models, Gemini 4 Carbon (gemini-4-carbon) and Gemini 4 Argon (gemini-4-argon), are paid only, as are Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview and Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash (gemini-omni-1.2-flash). Gemini 4 Carbon, which Google calls its most capable reasoning model, has been generally available since 2026-11-10 and is not available on the Gemini API free tier. Gemini 4 Argon, generally available since 2026-10-13, is not available on the Gemini API free tier. According to ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/google-ai-plans, "Gemini 4 Argon is not available on the Free plan." Gemini 4 Argon is available through the Gemini API on the paid tier. "Direct use of the Gemini API (such as using API keys or external applications) is billed and managed separately," per ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/google-ai-plans. Google AI Pro and Ultra provide access to Gemini 4 Argon in Google AI Studio, per ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/google-ai-plans. Gemini 4 Argon is in Antigravity on Google AI Ultra and paid Google AI Pro. In Google AI Studio, Gemini 4 Carbon requires a Google AI Ultra plan and is not available on the Free or Google AI Pro plans (aistudio.google.com/docs/google-ai-plans). In Antigravity, Gemini 4 Carbon is available on Google AI Ultra and Enterprise only (antigravity.google/docs/models). On a Google AI Pro trial, Argon is only available "on trial with eligible premium devices" (antigravity.google/docs/models). Claude Opus 5.5 and Claude Sonnet 5.5 are not included on Google AI Pro trials; trial users and those with memberships through third-party partners, Pixel Pass or Google Fi manage subscriptions through Google One. Google AI Pro via partner offers like Jio's does not include Gemini 4 Argon, Claude Sonnet 5.5 or Claude Opus 5.5 in Antigravity. Per a Google staff member on discuss.ai.google.dev (2026-10-21), "Those frontier models are restricted to directly billed (non-trial/non-promotional) Google AI Pro, Google AI Ultra and Enterprise plans." No Gemini image model has a free tier in the API. Nano Banana 2.1 (gemini-nano-banana-2.1) became generally available on 2026-10-06. It costs $0.0336 per 1K image, $0.0504 per 2K image and $0.113 per 4K image. The Batch API halves those prices. Nano Banana Pro costs $0.134 per 1K or 2K image and $0.24 per 4K image. Except for Gemini Decision, Google publishes no free-tier rate limits; each project's limits are shown in Google AI Studio. Developers report 429 errors showing 20 requests per day for Gemini 3.x Flash models and 500 requests per day for 3.x Flash-Lite models as of September 2026. Rate limits apply per project, not per API key. Daily request quotas reset at midnight Pacific time, per Google's rate-limits page. Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. If your app calls gemini-3.7-flash, Google deprecated it on 2026-10-08. Requests to gemini-3.7-flash are routed automatically to gemini-3.8-flash. Google says to update the model string to gemini-3.8-flash. Google deprecated gemini-2.5-pro and gemini-2.5-flash on 2026-11-02. Both models shut down on 2026-12-01. Use them until that date. From that date, requests to gemini-2.5-pro route to gemini-3.8-flash and are billed at its rates. Requests to gemini-2.5-flash route to gemini-3.5-flash-lite and are billed at its rates. Update your model string before 2026-12-01 and review Google’s migration guides for breaking API changes. gemini-2.5-flash-lite is not deprecated. If your app calls Gemini 3.5 Flash (gemini-3.5-flash), Google deprecated it on 2026-10-08. Requests to gemini-3.5-flash are routed automatically to gemini-3.6-flash. Google says to update the model string to gemini-3.6-flash or gemini-3.8-flash. Google shut down Gemini Omni Flash Preview (gemini-omni-flash-preview) on 2026-10-22. Google's replacement is gemini-omni-1.2-flash. Google shuts down Gemini Omni 1.1 Flash (gemini-omni-1.1-flash) on December 3, 2026; after that, requests that name gemini-omni-1.1-flash are answered by gemini-omni-1.2-flash at Gemini Omni 1.2 Flash rates. Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite (gemini-3.1-flash-lite) can be called until 2027-05-07, when Google shuts it down. Google's replacement is gemini-3.5-flash-lite. Paid, per million tokens (input/output; output prices include thinking tokens): Gemini 4 Carbon $2/$10 through 2026-11-30 (context caching $0.10, then $0.20, implicit caching only); Gemini 4 Argon $2/$10 through 2026-11-30 (context caching $0.10, then $0.20, implicit caching only); Gemini 3.8 Flash $0.75/$3.75 until 2026-12-31, then $1.50 input and $7.50 output from 2027-01-01 (3.6 Flash: the same prices and dates); Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite $0.30/$2.50; Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite $0.25/$1.50; Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview $2/$12 (prompts up to 200K tokens; prompts over 200K tokens cost $4 input and $18 output). Through 2026-11-30, Gemini 4 Argon's Standard output price is below Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview's for prompts up to 200K tokens, with the same input price; from 2026-12-01 Argon's is higher. From December 1, 2026, Gemini 4 Argon will cost $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens for Standard, $2 input and $10 output for Batch API, $2 input and $10 output for Flex, and $7.20 input and $36 output for Priority. From December 1, 2026, Gemini 4 Carbon will also cost $4 per million input tokens and $20 per million output tokens for Standard, $2 input and $10 output for Batch API and Flex, and $7.20 input and $36 output for Priority. The Batch API costs half the standard price; Gemini 3.8 Flash is $0.375 input and $1.875 output per million tokens through 2026-12-31. Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon on the Batch API are $1 input and $5 output through 2026-11-30. Google also sells two tiers, Flex and Priority, both in Preview. A request picks one with the service_tier field ("flex" or "priority"); without it the request is Standard. Gemini 4 Carbon and Gemini 4 Argon on Flex are $1 input and $5 output through 2026-11-30; on Priority they are $3.60 input and $18 output through 2026-11-30. "The Gemini Flex API is an inference tier that offers a 50% cost reduction compared to standard rates, in exchange for variable latency and best-effort availability" (ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/flex-inference). "Priority inference is priced at 75-100% more than the standard API and billed per token" (ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/priority-inference). The Gemini API Contributor Tier is an invite-only private preview. Eligible users will be invited by email. It offers half the Standard price for Gemini 4 Carbon, Gemini 4 Argon, Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview, Gemini 3.8 Flash, and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. Google uses the data from those models to improve its products. "Please don't submit sensitive or personal information" (ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/logs-policy). Grounding with Google Search is supported on the free tier for Gemini 3.8 Live, Gemini 3.8 Live Extended Thinking and Gemini 3.1 Flash Live Preview. It is not available on the free tier for Gemini 4 Hydrogen, Gemini 4 Argon or the Gemini 3.x Flash, Flash-Lite and Pro models. On the paid tier, 5,000 search requests a month are free, shared across Gemini 3 and newer models, then $14 per 1,000. Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API.

The Gemini API Free Tier needs no credit card or billing account; linking a billing account and prepaying moves you to the Paid Tier. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-22.)
Google's pricing page says free-tier content is used to improve Google's products. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing, read 2026-10-04.)
For developers outside the European Economic Area, Switzerland and the United Kingdom, Google's terms say human reviewers may read free-tier prompts and responses, and Google says not to send sensitive, confidential or personal information on the free tier. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-04.)
Paid-tier projects created on or after October 26, 2026, store Generate Content API requests and responses by default. Projects created before that date keep their existing Generate Content API storage setting, which is off unless it was turned on in AI Studio. The Interactions API stores requests by default in all projects, including projects created before October 26, 2026. The Paid Tier keeps stored interactions for 55 days and the Free Tier for 1 day. Logging also covers calls made through OpenAI compatibility endpoints. Logs are retained for up to 55 days, configurable to 7, 14 or 28 days. Logs are not used to improve Google's products unless shared. Logging can be toggled independently for each API in AI Studio, and store=false on a request turns it off for that request. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/logs-policy, read 2026-11-06.)
Apps that serve users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland or the United Kingdom may use only the paid tier. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-04.)
Google's terms require users to be 18 years of age or older to use the Gemini API and Google AI Studio. The API may not be used in a website, app, or other service directed towards or likely to be accessed by individuals under 18. These rules apply to both the free and paid tiers. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-17.)
Google offers the Gemini API and Google AI Studio, free and paid, in 230 countries and territories, including Taiwan, Brazil, Japan, Singapore, and the United Kingdom. China, Hong Kong, Macao, Russia, Belarus, and Iran are not among them. Google says to developers outside the list: "try the Gemini API in Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform". (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/available-regions, read 2026-10-17.)
Google's terms say changes to Gemini API paid prices take effect 30 days after Google posts them unless Google specifies otherwise. Pricing for a new paid service takes effect immediately unless Google specifies otherwise. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms, read 2026-10-17.)
Google is moving existing Postpay accounts to Prepay for Gemini API usage. An account that has not switched and added credits by the cutover date in its account notice has its paid service interrupted; other Google Cloud services on the billing account stay on Postpay. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)
When the Prepay balance reaches $0, every API key in every project on the billing account stops working until credits are added; requests then fail with an HTTP 402 Payment Required error. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)
The monthly Google Cloud credits from Google AI Pro or Ultra are eligible Google Cloud credits. On the Prepay billing plan, these credits pay for Gemini API usage only after you buy Prepay credits in AI Studio. With a $0 Prepay balance, requests fail even with unused Google Cloud credits, according to a Google staff member on discuss.ai.google.dev. (From discuss.ai.google.dev/t/error-code-402-message-your-prepayment-credits-are-depleted/185524, read 2026-10-10.)
A paid project does not automatically revert to the free tier, even when its Prepay balance reaches $0. To use the free tier, disable billing on the project, which unlinks it from its billing account. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-10.)
Disabling billing on a Google Cloud project stops all other paid Google Cloud services in it. Some resources may be deleted and become non-recoverable. Outstanding charges are still due. (From cloud.google.com/billing/docs/how-to/modify-project, read 2026-10-10.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it embeddings_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://ai.google.dev/pricing, where it says: “Our first multimodal embedding model, mapping text, images, video, audio, and PDFs into a unified embedding space”. How we use this

Recorded, but does not affect rank:

effective 2027-01-01 — pricing restructured: Gemini 3.8 Flash and Gemini 3.6 Flash on the Gemini API have introductory pricing through December 31, 2026 on Google AI Studio and Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform. Standard input is $0.75 per million tokens through December 31, 2026, then $1.50 from January 1, 2027. Output is $3.75 then $7.50. Batch and Flex input is $0.375 then $0.75, output $1.875 then $3.75. Priority input is $1.35 then $2.70, output $6.75 then $13.50. The Free tier stays free of charge. Source ↗
effective 2026-12-01 — pricing restructured: Gemini 4 Argon on the Gemini API has introductory pricing through November 30, 2026. Standard input is $2.00 per million tokens through November 30, 2026, then $4.00 from December 1, 2026. Output is $10.00 then $20.00. Batch and Flex input is $1.00 then $2.00, output $5.00 then $10.00. Priority input is $3.60 then $7.20, output $18.00 then $36.00. It is not available on the Free tier. Source ↗
effective 2026-12-01 — pricing restructured: Gemini 4 Carbon (gemini-4-carbon), generally available on the Gemini API since November 10, 2026, has introductory pricing through November 30, 2026. Standard input is $2.00 per million tokens through November 30, 2026, then $4.00 from December 1, 2026. Output is $10.00 then $20.00. Batch and Flex input is $1.00 then $2.00, output $5.00 then $10.00. Priority input is $3.60 then $7.20, output $18.00 then $36.00. It is not available on the Free tier. Source ↗
effective 2026-09-18 — restriction: Since 2026-09-18 Google serves the Gemini 2.5 models only to users who have used them before, and points new projects to 3.5 Flash-Lite or 3.8 Flash. Source ↗
effective 2026-04-01 — restriction: Google began enforcing billing-account-level spend caps on 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. Source ↗
effective 2026-03-02 — restriction: Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API or AI Studio. Source ↗

Full profile Alternatives ai.google.dev/pricing ↗

Pinecone stable

Free

Vector database. The Starter plan is free: up to 2 GB storage, 2M write units and 1M read units a month, 1 GB of egress a month (reads that return data stop at the cap until the next billing period), 5 indexes, 1 project and 2 users, on AWS us-east-1 only. Assistant includes 1 GB storage and 500k input, 300k output and 500k context tokens a month. Three embedding models include 5M tokens a month each; bge-reranker-v2-m3 includes 500 requests a month. Builder is $20/month flat.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it embeddings_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://pinecone.io/pricing, where it says: “Inference - Embedding llama-text-embed-v2 5M tokens/mo included”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives pinecone.io/pricing ↗

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. Trial rate limits: 20 requests a minute per Chat model, 2,000 Embed inputs a minute and 10 Rerank requests a minute. Trial keys can use all of Cohere's models and APIs. Production keys are pay-as-you-go. Prices per 1M tokens: Command R7B $0.0375/$0.15; Command R $0.15/$0.60. The pricing page lists Command A+ (Apache 2.0) at $0 through an API key and as a model download.

Cohere's Trial API keys may not be used for production or commercial purposes. (From cohere.com/pricing, read 2026-10-04.)
Cohere creates a free Trial API key with each new account; no credit card is needed. (From cohere.com/pricing, read 2026-10-22.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it embeddings_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://cohere.com/pricing, where it says: “Embed Search and discovery model”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives cohere.com/pricing ↗

Google Gemini Embedding 2 stable

Free

Free of charge text, image, audio, and video input on the Gemini API free tier, with Google using the content to improve its products. Batch is not available on the free tier. Paid rates are $0.20 per 1M text tokens, $0.45 per 1M image tokens, $6.50 per 1M audio tokens, and $12.00 per 1M video tokens. Batch paid rates are $0.10 per 1M text tokens, $0.225 per 1M image tokens, $3.25 per 1M audio tokens, and $6.00 per 1M video tokens. The same paid rates apply on Google's Gemini Enterprise Agent Platform (formerly Vertex AI). It embeds text, images, video, audio, and PDFs into one embedding space.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it embeddings_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://cloud.google.com/vertex-ai/docs/generative-ai/embeddings/get-text-embeddings, where it says: “Generate text embeddings with Agent Platform Text Embeddings API”. How we use this

Full profile Alternatives ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing ↗

Demoted — and exactly why

These offers reach this page too and rank below the list above. Each one names the recorded fact behind it. A recorded limit reduction, pricing restructure or new restriction is shown on every surface where the offer appears, with its date and summary — but it does not move rank. We have change records for only 16% of vendors, and disproportionately for well-known ones, so ranking on them would demote the vendors we happen to watch most closely.

−2

Jina AI stable

Free Credits

Search, Reader, embeddings and reranker APIs. Each new API key comes with 10M free tokens, shared across these APIs; no page says they renew. Jina's FAQ states for the hosted API: "No separate license needed. Commercial use is covered by the service terms: sign up and pay through this site or the cloud marketplace." CC BY-NC 4.0 covers self-hosting the model weights. The exception is jina-embeddings-v4, which is non-commercial only even through the API. Search (s.jina.ai) needs a key and costs at least 10,000 tokens a request, so the free tokens cover at most 1,000 searches. Search allows 100 requests a minute with a free key and the same with a paid key; only a premium key raises it, to 1,000. Reader (r.jina.ai), which converts a URL to LLM-friendly text, allows 500 requests a minute with a free or paid key, 5,000 with a premium key, and 20 without a key. Reader without a key is free and uses no tokens, so it keeps working after a key's free tokens run out. Paid tokens are prepaid: 1 billion for $50 ($0.05 per million), or 11 billion for $500 with a premium key. Jina AI has been part of Elastic since October 2025. The page we cite for Jina AI states in words that it is free, which confirms the price — the limits stated here come from our own record rather than from that page.

Jina's terms say it does not use customer inputs to train models, but may use aggregated, anonymized operational metadata to improve services. (From jina.ai/legal, read 2026-10-16.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it embeddings_api. We read that on 2026-09-27 from https://jina.ai/embeddings/, where it says: “Top-performing multimodal multilingual long-context embeddings for search, RAG and agent applications.”. How we use this

−2 time_limited_offer Tier "Free Credits" is a credit grant that runs out, not an ongoing free tier.

Full profile Alternatives Compare Compare jina.ai/reader/ ↗

Not on our ranked list

One of the 6 offers matching this query is not on our ranked list — 1 is not a free offer. Here is how that order is derived.

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: best-of:embeddings_api
seed: aa9702d8b3ab57e55c3a95e04dd86ed2998b5dca4624bdb0d52ac0a62bd8044d
tie_count: 4

Quick Comparison

Vendor	Free Tier	Key Limits	Durability	Read / catalogue date
Google Gemini API	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, Gemin...	watch effective 2028-05-14	2026-11-09
Pinecone	Free	Vector database. The Starter plan is free: up to 2 GB storage, 2M write units and 1M read units a month, 1 GB of egress ...	stable	2026-11-11
Cohere	Free	AI model API for Command chat models, Embed, Rerank, Transcribe and Parse. Every account starts with a Trial API key: ca... read found the page different · 2026-10-26	stable	2026-10-26 / 2026-08-16
Google Gemini Embedding 2	Free	Free of charge text, image, audio, and video input on the Gemini API free tier, with Google using the content to improve...	stable	2026-11-11

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the best free embeddings api tool in 2026?

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 4 free embeddings api offers that clear our bar, each listed with the terms we publish and the date we last read them. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

Which of these free embeddings api tiers have held their terms?

4 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 3 carry no recorded change to the terms we publish, and 1 a recorded narrowing. The Durability column below says which offer is in which group, and links the dated record behind every change. We do not rank these by how much you get, because the limits are not comparable without reading each vendor's page.

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