Every free embeddings api tier that clears our bar in 2026: 3 offers meet the criteria and 0 offers are 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 3 of them, and on all 3 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 2026-09-30. 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.

3 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 2 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 476 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 83 ai / ml offers →
1
Free (Reduced)

Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Gemini Embedding 2 and Gemma 4 are free of charge. Gemini 3.1 Pro Preview is paid only. Google publishes no free-tier rate limits; each project's limits are shown in Google AI Studio. Google's pricing table marks free-tier use as "Used to improve our products". 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. Paid, per million tokens (input/output): Gemini 3.8 Flash $0.75/$3.75 until 2026-12-31, then double; Gemini 3.5 Flash $1.50/$9; 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). Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API.

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 2026-04-01 — restriction: 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. Source ↗
2
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

3
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, limited to 1,000 API calls a month, and may not be used for production or commercial purposes. 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.

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

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.

Nothing on this page is demoted today — we hold no disqualifying record against any of these offers.

Not on our ranked list

2 of the 5 offers matching this query are not on our ranked list — 2 are not free offers. 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
2026-09-30
query_key
best-of:embeddings_api
seed
1cc79f7690ef5cc47a3c9fd9819723796f9578e732e35b6a1e5e3593de71d41e
tie_count
3

Quick Comparison

Vendor Free Tier Key Limits Durability Read / catalogue date
Google Gemini API Free (Reduced) Free tier: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.7 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 3.1 Flash-Lite, Gemini 3 Flash Preview, Ge...
read found the page different · 2026-09-22
watch
effective 2026-06-01
2026-09-22 / 2026-08-18
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 ...
read found the page different · 2026-09-26
stable 2026-09-26 / 2026-07-31
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 · 2026-09-18
stable 2026-09-18 / 2026-08-16

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 3 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?

3 offers meet our criteria on this page. Of those, 2 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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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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