Best Free LLM API Tools

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 models PaddleOCR-VL-1.5 and DeepSeek-OCR; the embedding models bge-m3, bge-large-zh-v1.5 and bge-large-en-v1.5; the reranker bge-reranker-v2-m3; Kolors image generation; and six speech recognition models. The Pro versions are paid: Qwen2.5-7B-Instruct (Pro), bge-m3 (Pro) and bge-reranker-v2-m3 (Pro). All other models are paid too, including DeepSeek-V4-Flash, DeepSeek-V4-Pro and GLM-5.3. Using all the free models requires real-name verification, and online personal verification accepts only Chinese-issued documents, such as a resident ID card or a Foreign Permanent Resident ID Card. The international site, siliconflow.com, is run by SiliconFlow Labs Pte. Ltd. under Singapore law, is not offered in mainland China, and gives $1 in free credits to start. Its paid rates per million input/output tokens: gpt-oss-120b $0.05/$0.45; DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash $0.15/$0.60. Best for personal projects and open source projects. When we read the page we cite for this offer on 2026-09-16, we found the page did not mention this offer, which is not evidence it ended, and we have read it again since, on 2026-10-01, without confirming the terms above, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it llm_api. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://siliconflow.cn, where it says: “硅基流动（SiliconFlow）专注于提供高效能、低成本的多品类 AI 模型服务”. How we use this

Mistral's Free plan includes monthly usage shared across Studio, the API and Vibe Code. The pricing page no longer states the amount as of 2026-10-07; it previously listed $10 a month in API credits. When it is used up, usage can stop until the next month unless pay-as-you-go is turned on. API keys work with no credit card, within rate limits. The plan also has limited messages, web searches and coding sessions in Vibe. API prices: Ministral 3 (3B) $0.1/$0.1 (per 1M tokens); Mistral Small 4 $0.15/$0.6 (per 1M tokens); Mistral Large 3 $0.5/$1.5 (per 1M tokens); Mistral Large 4 (public preview since 2026-10-06, 1M-token context) $1.36/$4.18 (per 1M tokens), and Mistral charges half that for its first two weeks; Mistral Medium 3.5 $1.5/$7.5 (per 1M tokens); Codestral $0.3/$0.9 (per 1M tokens). Mistral Embed is $0.1 per 1M input tokens, and Codestral Embed is $0.15 per 1M input tokens. OCR 4.1 costs $4 per 1,000 pages. Mistral Moderation 2 is free. Mistral retired Devstral 2 (devstral-2512) on 2026-07-31 and names Mistral Medium 3.5 as its replacement. Batch processing is half price, and cached input tokens cost up to 90% less. Mistral publishes no rate-limit figures. Each organization's per-model limits (tokens per minute, requests per second) appear in Admin Panel > API > Limits. Best for open source projects. Note — discovered 2026-10-07: Mistral's pricing page stopped listing an API credit on the Free plan. It had listed $10 a month. Mistral's docs still say each plan includes monthly usage but give no amount. Source ↗

• On the Free plan, Mistral may use your Studio and API inputs and outputs to train its models, and you can opt out at any time. (From help.mistral.ai/en/articles/347617-do-you-use-my-user-data-to-train-your-artificial-intelligence-models, read 2026-10-05.)
• The API opt-out toggle is under Anonymous improvement data, in the Privacy menu of the Admin panel, and is separate from the Vibe training toggle, so opting out of one does not opt out of the other. (From help.mistral.ai/en/articles/455207-can-i-opt-out-of-my-input-or-output-data-being-used-for-training, read 2026-10-05.)
• Mistral may train on inputs and outputs from Labs or Preview Models (models with the "labs" prefix in Studio) even if you opted out or use zero data retention. (From legal.mistral.ai/terms/commercial-terms-of-service, 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://mistral.ai/pricing, where it says: “Frontier-scale infrastructure for training and inference”. How we use this

Cloud-hosted Ollama for running open-source LLMs — The Free plan costs $0 and includes starter usage credits. Buying usage credits unlocks all models. It includes 1 concurrent request. Pro costs $20 a month with $60 of usage credits, Max $100 a month with $300. Usage is billed per million tokens at each model's rate, for example gpt-oss:120b at $0.15 input and $0.60 output, and some models, such as deepseek-v4.1-flash, cost half off-peak (outside 12:00 to 18:00 UTC on weekdays, and all weekend). Best for open source projects. Note — effective between 2026-08-27 and 2026-09-01: Ollama's Free plan now includes starter usage credits and starter models only; buying usage credits unlocks the other cloud models. Before, Free included cloud models with a usage limit. Source ↗

• Ollama allows one account per person. A second free account is not allowed. (From ollama.com/pricing, read 2026-10-05.)
• Free usage resets monthly from your sign-up date. Unused usage does not roll over. You can buy usage credits instead of waiting. (From ollama.com/pricing, read 2026-10-05.)
• Ollama says cloud prompts and responses are never logged or used for training. (From ollama.com/pricing, read 2026-10-05.)
• Models run mainly in the United States. Requests may be routed to Europe or Singapore for capacity. (From ollama.com/pricing, read 2026-10-05.)
• Requests beyond the 1 concurrent request wait in a queue. When the queue is full, new requests are rejected until a slot frees up. (From ollama.com/pricing, 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://ollama.com, where it says: “Ollama lets you use open models with your coding agents”. How we use this

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. 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 $1.50 input and $7.50 output from 2027-01-01 (3.7 Flash and 3.6 Flash: the same prices and dates); 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). The Batch API costs half the standard price; Gemini 3.8 Flash is $0.375/$1.875 per million tokens through 2026-12-31. Grounding with Google Search is not available on the free tier for Gemini 3.x models. On the paid tier, 5,000 search requests a month are free, shared across all Gemini 3.x models, then $14 per 1,000. Accounts opened after 2026-03-02 cannot spend the $300 Google Cloud welcome credit on the Gemini API. Best for open source projects.

• 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.)
• 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 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.)
• Impress Watch reported the cutover date as 2026-10-12. (From watch.impress.co.jp/docs/news/2132505.html, 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.)
• Google's steps for switching to Prepay tell you to set up auto-reload on the AI Studio Billing page to top up your credit balance when it runs low. (From ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing, read 2026-10-07.)

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

Fast LLM inference on Groq's LPU hardware. Free plan: gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b 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. Llama 3.3 70B and Llama 3.1 8B left the free and developer plans on 2026-08-16 and are Enterprise-only. Developer plan prices per 1M tokens: gpt-oss-120b $0.15/$0.60; gpt-oss-20b $0.075/$0.30. Best for open source projects. Note — 2026-08-16: Groq shut down Llama 3.1 8B and Llama 3.3 70B on its free and developer plans. On the free plan Llama 3.1 8B had allowed 14,400 requests and 500,000 tokens a day; the free chat models left (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b and a Qwen 27B model) allow 1,000 requests and 200,000 tokens a day each. Source ↗

• Rate limits apply to the whole organization, not to each user or API key. A request over a limit gets a 429 Too Many Requests error. (From console.groq.com/docs/rate-limits, read 2026-10-05.)
• 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 does not keep inference requests by default. It may log inputs and outputs for up to 30 days to troubleshoot or investigate abuse; enabling Zero Data Retention in Data Controls stops this. (From console.groq.com/docs/your-data, read 2026-10-05.)
• 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

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. Seven models, including @cf/moonshotai/kimi-k2.6, @cf/zai-org/glm-5.3 and @cf/deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-pro-0813, require the Workers Paid plan or prepaid AI Gateway credits. 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 ↗

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

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.)

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