Best Free LLM API Tools

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. On the Workers Paid plan (from $5 per month), usage above 10,000 Neurons per day costs $0.011 per 1,000 Neurons. Eight models require the Workers Paid plan or prepaid AI Gateway credits: @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6, @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.7-code, @cf/zai-org/glm-5.2, @cf/zai-org/glm-5.3, @cf/zai-org/glm-5.3-flash, @cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-flash-0731, @cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017 and @cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-pro-0813. Cloudflare removes 24 models from Workers AI on 2026-11-20, including six of those eight (all but glm-5.3 and deepseek-v4.1-flash-1017); they can be called until then, and from 2026-11-20 requests to them fail with HTTP 410 Gone (error 5028). On 2026-05-30, Cloudflare deprecated 18 models and told users to remove references to them: @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct, @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct-awq, @cf/meta/llama-3.1-70b-instruct, @cf/meta/llama-3-8b-instruct, @cf/meta/llama-3-8b-instruct-awq, @hf/meta-llama/meta-llama-3-8b-instruct, @cf/meta/llama-2-7b-chat-int8, @cf/meta/llama-2-7b-chat-fp16, @cf/mistral/mistral-7b-instruct-v0.1, @hf/mistral/mistral-7b-instruct-v0.2, @hf/google/gemma-7b-it, @cf/google/gemma-3-12b-it, @hf/nousresearch/hermes-2-pro-mistral-7b, @cf/microsoft/phi-2, @cf/defog/sqlcoder-7b-2, @cf/unum/uform-gen2-qwen-500m, @cf/facebook/bart-large-cnn and @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.5. On 2026-10-15, Cloudflare's model catalog still listed @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct-fp8, @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast and the -lora variants, but no longer listed @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct-fast; llama-3.1-8b-instruct-fp8 and the -lora variants are among the 24 models removed on 2026-11-20. Cloudflare's suggested replacements were @cf/zai-org/glm-4.7-flash, @cf/google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it and @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6, which is itself removed on 2026-11-20. Since 2026-05-30, requests to @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.5 go to @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6, which costs more and requires the Workers Paid plan or prepaid AI Gateway credits; without them, requests get HTTP 403 (error 5035). Note — 2026-07-28: On 2026-07-28 Cloudflare took Kimi K2.6, Kimi K2.7 Code and GLM-5.2 off the Workers Free plan; they now need the Workers Paid plan (or, from 2026-08-07, prepaid AI Gateway credits). Source ↗

• Workers AI's free allowance on the Workers Free plan needs no credit card. (From cloudflare.com/products/workers-ai, read 2026-10-22.)
• Cloudflare prices models in Neurons per million tokens. @cf/openai/gpt-oss-20b costs 18,182 Neurons per million input tokens and 27,273 per million output tokens. @cf/openai/gpt-oss-120b costs 31,818 and 68,182 Neurons respectively. @cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast costs 26,668 and 204,805 Neurons. @cf/meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct-fp8-fast costs 4,119 and 34,868 Neurons. 10,000 Neurons pay for about 367,000 output tokens of gpt-oss-20b, 147,000 of gpt-oss-120b, 49,000 of llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast, or 287,000 of llama-3.1-8b-instruct-fp8-fast, not counting input tokens. Other models have their own rates on Cloudflare's pricing page. (From developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing, read 2026-11-12.)
• Workers AI is subject to Cloudflare's Self-Serve Subscription Agreement. The agreement does not restrict commercial use. (From developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/data-usage, read 2026-10-29.)
• Cloudflare does not create or train the third-party AI models in Workers AI. Each model may be subject to license terms from its provider. (From developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/data-usage, read 2026-10-29.)
• Cloudflare does not use Workers AI inputs or outputs to train models. It does not retain them after a standard inference request, unless you enable a feature that stores them, such as logging or caching in AI Gateway. (From developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/data-usage, read 2026-10-29.)
• Cloudflare AI Search is a managed search service over your own content. Every account gets 5 million ingestion tokens, 10 GB-month of storage, 1,000 semantic queries and 1,000 full-text queries a month. Embedding and reranking calls are billed as AI Search usage and do not appear on the Workers AI bill. (From developers.cloudflare.com/ai-search/platform/limits-pricing, read 2026-11-03.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it llm_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/, where it says: “prepaid AI Gateway credits to pay for Workers AI inference”. How we use this

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, google/gemma-4-31b-it and nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b. Mistral Large 4 (mistralai/mistral-large-4-1t-a52b) is a Free Endpoint on build.nvidia.com as of 2026-10-29. NVIDIA's free embedding models are nvidia/nemotron-3-embed-1b, nvidia/nemotron-3.5-embed-1b and nvidia/nemotron-3.5-embed-8b. The free reranking model is nvidia/nemotron-3.5-rerank-8b. The 3.5 models handle text and document images and were added on 2026-10-20. Up to 40 requests per minute; limits may vary by model, and traffic from other users may cause throttling. NVIDIA's API Trial Terms allow free use for testing and evaluation only, not production. NVIDIA posts an end-of-life date on each hosted model's page on build.nvidia.com; after that date, requests for the model return HTTP 410 Gone. NVIDIA stopped supporting NVIDIA Nemotron 3 Super (nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b) after 2026-10-19, and its catalogue no longer lists the model (checked 2026-10-21). Nemotron 3.5 Super VL (nvidia/nemotron-3.5-super-vl-120b-a12b), an early-access model, is a Free Endpoint. NVIDIA retired Kimi K3 (moonshotai/kimi-k3) on 2026-10-15. Other model IDs NVIDIA retired in 2026 include these. DeepSeek: deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-pro and deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-flash on 2026-08-07, deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-pro-0813 on 2026-09-14 and deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-flash-0731 on 2026-09-21. Kimi: moonshotai/kimi-k2-instruct and moonshotai/kimi-k2-thinking on 2026-05-12. GLM: z-ai/glm4.7 on 2026-05-14, z-ai/glm-5.1 on 2026-07-02, z-ai/glm-5.2 on 2026-08-21 and z-ai/glm-5.3 on 2026-10-27 (GLM 5.3 Flash, z-ai/glm-5.3-flash, is still a Free Endpoint). Qwen: qwen/qwen2.5-coder-32b-instruct on 2026-05-12, qwen/qwen3-next-80b-a3b-thinking on 2026-05-21, qwen/qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct on 2026-06-11, qwen/qwen3.5-122b-a10b on 2026-07-20, and qwen/qwen3.5-397b-a17b and qwen/qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct on 2026-07-27. MiniMax: minimaxai/minimax-m2.5 on 2026-05-12, minimaxai/minimax-m2.7 on 2026-07-27 and minimaxai/minimax-m3 on 2026-09-09. gpt-oss: openai/gpt-oss-120b on 2026-09-03. Llama: meta/llama-3.2-11b-vision-instruct on 2026-11-05, meta/llama-4-maverick-17b-128e-instruct on 2026-07-27, and meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct, meta/llama-3.1-8b-instruct, meta/llama-3.1-70b-instruct, meta/llama-3.2-1b-instruct and meta/llama-3.2-3b-instruct on 2026-08-26. Nemotron: nvidia/llama-3.3-nemotron-super-49b-v1, nvidia/llama-3.3-nemotron-super-49b-v1.5, nvidia/llama-3.1-nemotron-nano-8b-v1, nvidia/llama-3.1-nemotron-nano-vl-8b-v1, nvidia/nvidia-nemotron-nano-9b-v2, nvidia/nemotron-nano-12b-v2-vl and nvidia/nemotron-mini-4b-instruct on 2026-08-26, and nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b on 2026-09-01. Mistral: mistralai/mistral-large-3-675b-instruct-2512 on 2026-07-23, mistralai/mixtral-8x7b-instruct-v0.1 on 2026-07-27 and mistralai/mistral-nemotron on 2026-09-28. Gemma: google/diffusiongemma-26b-a4b-it on 2026-11-12, google/gemma-3-27b-it on 2026-05-12, and google/gemma-3n-e4b-it and google/gemma-3n-e2b-it on 2026-07-27. Phi: microsoft/phi-4-mini-instruct and microsoft/phi-4-multimodal-instruct on 2026-07-15. Others: stepfun-ai/step-3.5-flash, bytedance/seed-oss-36b-instruct, sarvamai/sarvam-m and abacusai/dracarys-llama-3.1-70b-instruct on 2026-07-27. Embedding models: nvidia/llama-3.2-nv-embedqa-1b-v2 and nvidia/llama-3.2-nemoretriever-300m-embed-v1 on 2026-05-18, and nvidia/nv-embedqa-e5-v5, nvidia/nv-embed-v1, nvidia/llama-nemotron-embed-1b-v2 and baai/bge-m3 on 2026-08-25.

• NVIDIA records prompts and outputs from free API use to improve its products and services, including AI models. Do not send confidential information or personal data unless expressly permitted. (From assets.ngc.nvidia.com/products/api-catalog/legal/NVIDIA%20API%20Trial%20Terms%20of%20Service.pdf, read 2026-10-10.)
• Using the API in production, or after the trial credits are used up, needs a separate subscription from NVIDIA or a third-party provider. (From assets.ngc.nvidia.com/products/api-catalog/legal/NVIDIA%20API%20Trial%20Terms%20of%20Service.pdf, read 2026-10-06.)
• Production use of NIM needs an NVIDIA AI Enterprise license. The 1-year list price is $4,500 per GPU. The cloud pay-as-you-go rate is $1 per hour per GPU plus the cloud service provider's instance cost. (From docs.nvidia.com/ai-enterprise/planning-resource/licensing-guide/latest/pricing.html, read 2026-10-29.)
• NVIDIA Developer Program members may run downloadable NIM microservices free for research, application development, and experimentation on up to 16 GPUs. Infrastructure may be cloud, data center, or personal workstation. (From docs.api.nvidia.com/nim/docs/product, read 2026-10-29.)
• The free NVIDIA AI Enterprise trial is 90 days long. It covers production deployments and commercial use. (From docs.api.nvidia.com/nim/docs/product, read 2026-10-29.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it llm_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://build.nvidia.com, where it says: “Experience the leading models to build enterprise generative AI apps now”. How we use this

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. Each of the three free models is also limited to 8,000 tokens a minute, and Groq applies whichever limit is reached first. Whisper is also limited to 20 requests a minute, 7,200 audio seconds an hour and 28,800 audio seconds (8 hours of audio) a day. On the free plan, gpt-oss-safeguard-20b is limited to 3 requests a minute, 1,000 requests a day, 2,000 tokens a minute and 200,000 tokens a day. Qwen3.8 27B, gpt-oss-safeguard-20b, Orpheus Arabic Saudi and Orpheus V1 English are Preview models. Groq says Preview models "are intended for evaluation purposes only and should not be used in production environments as they may be discontinued at short notice". Llama 3.3 70B and Llama 3.1 8B left the free and developer plans on 2026-08-16 and are Enterprise-only. Orpheus text-to-speech (English and Saudi Arabic) is also on the free plan, at 10 requests a minute, 100 requests and 3,600 tokens a day. Developer plan prices per 1M tokens: gpt-oss-120b $0.15/$0.60; gpt-oss-20b $0.075/$0.30; Qwen3.8 27B $0.80/$4.00. The Batch API costs 50% less and returns results within 24 hours to 7 days, without impacting standard rate limits. When requests to gpt-oss-20b, gpt-oss-120b or gpt-oss-safeguard-20b start with the same text as a recent request, Groq caches that part automatically and bills those input tokens 50% less. The batch discount does not stack with prompt caching discounts; all batch tokens are billed at the batch rate regardless of cache status. Orpheus text-to-speech costs $22 per 1M characters in English and $40 in Saudi Arabic. Groq's API is OpenAI-compatible at the base URL https://api.groq.com/openai/v1. The free models' API model IDs are openai/gpt-oss-120b, openai/gpt-oss-20b and qwen/qwen3.8-27b. Note — 2026-10-06: Groq cut the free limits of gpt-oss-safeguard-20b from 30 to 3 requests a minute and from 8,000 to 2,000 tokens a minute; 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day are unchanged. The Internet Archive's capture of console.groq.com/docs/rate-limits on 2026-09-28 lists 30 RPM and 8K TPM, and its capture of 2026-10-06 lists 3 RPM and 2K TPM. Groq announced no change. The other free chat models keep 30 requests and 8,000 tokens a minute. Source ↗

• Groq rate limits apply to the whole organization, not per user or API key. A request over the limit returns a 429 Too Many Requests error. Cached tokens do not count toward rate limits. (From console.groq.com/docs/rate-limits, read 2026-11-04.)
• You are billed only after you add a payment method and move to the paid Developer tier. (From console.groq.com/docs/billing-faqs, read 2026-10-05.)
• Groq's Services Agreement does not permit it to train or fine-tune models on your inputs or outputs unless you give permission. (From console.groq.com/docs/legal/services-agreement, read 2026-10-05.)
• Groq's Services Agreement grants use of Groq APIs to integrate its services into customer applications for end users. Its restrictions do not prohibit commercial use. (From console.groq.com/docs/legal/services-agreement, read 2026-10-29.)
• Customers may not resell access to their Groq account. Groq's Services Agreement prohibits selling, reselling, or transferring its services except with Groq's express approval. (From console.groq.com/docs/legal/services-agreement, read 2026-10-29.)
• Groq does not retain inference requests by default. Batch input and output files are kept for 30 days unless deleted earlier. Fine-tuning data is kept until deleted. Groq may log inference inputs and outputs for up to 30 days to troubleshoot errors or investigate abuse. Zero Data Retention stops this logging and disables the Batch API and fine-tuning. (From console.groq.com/docs/your-data, read 2026-11-04.)
• Data Groq retains is stored in Google Cloud buckets in the United States. (From console.groq.com/docs/your-data, read 2026-10-05.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it llm_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://groq.com/pricing, where it says: “One fully integrated platform for infrastructure, inference, and control”. How we use this

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 llm_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://cohere.com/pricing, where it says: “Command Generative language models”. How we use this

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 llm_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://ai.google.dev/pricing, where it says: “Our first hybrid reasoning model which supports a 1M token context”. How we use this

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. Models listed on 2026-10-15, with the IDs Hetzner's docs give: Qwen/Qwen3.6-35B-A3B-FP8 and Qwen3.8-27B, each with a 262,144-token context and image input. Hetzner says the list will change while the API is experimental; GET /v1/models returns the current one. Limits per API key, per minute: 4M input tokens, 100k output tokens and 10 requests. Needs a Hetzner account; keys are created at experiments.hetzner.com. Hetzner says it does not store the content of requests or responses. The page we cite for Hetzner Inference API 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.

• Hetzner says not to use the Inference API for production: it is experimental and offered as is, with no guarantee of performance or availability. (From docs.hetzner.com/general/company-and-policy/experiments/inference, read 2026-10-09.)
• It is free only while it stays experimental. Hetzner says it will email users before that changes. (From docs.hetzner.com/general/company-and-policy/experiments/inference, read 2026-10-09.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it llm_api. We read that on 2026-10-09 from https://docs.hetzner.com/general/company-and-policy/experiments/inference/, where it says: “The Inference API provides access to open-source large language models via an OpenAI-compatible REST API.”. How we use this