Best Free Model Gateway Tools

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. No credit card is required. On 2026-10-11, the nine setup quests paid 3 Pollen in total, worth about $3 because 1 Pollen is worth about $1. The documented API for text, image, audio and video requires a GitHub sign-in and an API key. On the keyed API, free use draws from Quest Pollen, with no promise of future grants. Paid-only models, such as Claude models, DeepSeek V4 Pro and Gemini 4 Argon, need purchased Pollen. Gemini 3.8 Flash (google/gemini-3.8-flash) is paid-only on Pollinations, so Quest Pollen cannot pay for it. Kimi K3 (moonshotai/kimi-k3) is not paid-only. Kimi K3.1 Pro (moonshotai/kimi-k3.1-pro) was paid-only until 2026-11-09, when Pollinations made it Quest-accessible; Quest Pollen can now pay for it. To run Claude Code on free Quest Pollen, run "polli harness claude-code on", start Claude Code with "claude --settings ~/.pollinations/claude-code.json", and use a model that is not paid-only. Quest Pollen pays for any model that Pollinations' live catalog (enter.pollinations.ai/models) does not mark paid-only. On 2026-10-18, more than 30 text models were not paid-only, among them GPT-6 Sol, GPT-6.1 Sol, GPT-6 Luna, GLM 5.3, Kimi K3, DeepSeek V4 Flash and DeepSeek V4.1 Flash. The command "polli harness claude-code on" connects Claude Code to Pollinations and uses openai/gpt-6-sol unless you specify another model. Pollinations' harness documentation says the command writes "a Claude Code settings file" and: "Claude Code reads the file only when launched with --settings; plain claude keeps your native login and ~/.claude settings." (From https://github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/CODING_HARNESSES.md, read 2026-10-20.) GPT-6 Sol costs 1.5 Pollen per million input tokens and 7.5 Pollen per million output tokens. For requests over 272,000 prompt tokens, GPT-6 Sol costs 3 Pollen per million input tokens and 11.25 Pollen per million output tokens, and these rates apply to the whole request. GPT-5 Nano costs 0.0375 and 0.30. GPT-OSS 20B costs 0.05 and 0.18. NVIDIA Nemotron 3.5 Lightning costs 0.045 and 0.165. Adding --model <id> to "polli harness claude-code on" picks another model. The documented API is OpenAI-compatible at the base URL https://gen.pollinations.ai/v1, with an API key from https://enter.pollinations.ai/keys. Pollinations' MCP documentation gives this Claude Code command: "claude mcp add --transport http pollinations https://gen.pollinations.ai/mcp/pollinations --header 'Authorization: Bearer YOUR_KEY'". Its tools include generateImage, generateText, generateVideo, generateAudio, listModels and getBalance. "Calls use the same Pollen wallet as the Pollinations API." The "polli harness claude-code on" command runs Claude Code itself on a Pollinations model; the MCP server gives an agent Pollinations tools. Model IDs of some of the models Quest Pollen can pay for: openai/gpt-6-sol, openai/gpt-6.1-sol, openai/gpt-6-luna, z-ai/glm-5.3, moonshotai/kimi-k3, deepseek/deepseek-v4-flash, deepseek/deepseek-v4.1-flash, openai/gpt-5-nano, openai/gpt-oss-20b, nvidia/nemotron-3.5-lightning, moonshotai/kimi-k3.1-pro. Note — 2026-07-10: Pollinations ended the free Pollen that refilled every hour on every account (0.01 to 0.4 Pollen an hour, by tier). Free Pollen now comes only from Quests, whose rewards are paid once and land as Quest Pollen; further use needs purchased Pollen. The change did not touch the keyless image and text endpoints, which Pollinations documents as the free Classic API. Source ↗

• Pollinations' Classic API needs no sign-up and no key. image.pollinations.ai (one image model; JPEGs up to 768 × 768 with a small Pollinations logo) and text.pollinations.ai (GPT-OSS 20B, with an OpenAI-compatible endpoint at text.pollinations.ai/openai) are free and rate-limited per IP address: one image request at a time, at least 45 seconds apart, and one text request at a time, at least 30 seconds apart. Past the limit they return HTTP 402 with a Retry-After header. Pollinations runs it on a best-effort basis with no uptime guarantee, and says limits and models can change. Every other model needs a key from enter.pollinations.ai. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/master/APIDOCS.md, read 2026-11-06.)
• Pollinations' API docs publish no fixed request rate for secret keys, which carry their own model permissions and budgets. A request can get HTTP 429 with a Retry-After header saying how long to wait. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/APIDOCS.md, read 2026-10-23.)
• Pollinations' Terms of Service state that model licences vary and commercial use depends on each model's licence. The Terms set no separate rules for usage paid with free Quest Pollen. There is no SLA. (From pollinations.ai/terms, read 2026-10-30.)
• Pollinations does not use prompts or outputs to train or fine-tune models without explicit opt-in. Prompts and outputs are processed transiently and not retained beyond what is needed to run the service, except saved configuration and short-lived response caches. A request to a community-hosted model is sent to that provider, whose own terms govern storage and training; Pollinations does not verify those practices. (From pollinations.ai/privacy, read 2026-10-30.)
• Pollinations stores generated images, video, audio, and 3D files at media.pollinations.ai. Retrieval is public with the URL. These files have a 30-day lifecycle from upload or refresh. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/APIDOCS.md, read 2026-11-03.)
• Pollinations requires browser apps to use a user-authorized sk_ key from Pollinations Pay. Personal sk_ keys must not be in browser code. A pk_ key only identifies the app and returns 401 if sent as a key. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/APIDOCS.md, read 2026-11-03.)
• Pollinations Pay, also called BYOP, lets users authorize an app to spend Pollen from their own wallet. Users set budget, expiry, models, and permissions. They can edit or revoke issued keys. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/enter.pollinations.ai/POLLEN_FAQ.md, read 2026-11-03.)
• Pollinations' image endpoint has a safe parameter. It defaults to off. The value nsfw enables sexual and violence filtering. The value true enables privacy and secrets filtering. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/APIDOCS.md, read 2026-11-03.)
• Owners of public community models in Pollinations can set prices. Pollinations credits owners 75% of the Pollen spent on their models. A linked GitHub username is required. (From github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/enter.pollinations.ai/POLLEN_FAQ.md, read 2026-11-03.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://github.com/pollinations/pollinations, where it says: “All models, one place: Flux, GPT, Claude, Gemini, Seedream, and more”. How we use this

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). New accounts also get a $1 credit with no card required; Lumenfall's terms say promotional credits typically expire after 90 days. After that you top up prepaid credits. Under Lumenfall's terms (2026-03-05), content sent through free features, including free API usage, may be used to train AI models.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://lumenfall.ai/, where it says: “unified access to the top image and video models across leading providers”. How we use this

AI model router. Free plan: 50 requests a day, no BYOK. Free models are capped at 20 requests a minute; accounts that have bought at least $10 of credits get 1,000 free-model requests a day. OpenRouter's pricing page says "25+ free models" and "4 free providers"; its model list (openrouter.ai/api/v1/models) had 17 model IDs ending in ":free" on 2026-10-20, and that list changes from week to week. The Standard plan (pay-as-you-go) charges a 5.5% fee on credit purchases and includes BYOK up to $25,000 of list-price inference a month with no fees, 5% after. The Business plan charges an 8% fee on credit purchases. It adds EU and US in-region routing: requests sent to eu.openrouter.ai or us.openrouter.ai stay with providers in that region. Free and Standard do not include in-region routing. No contract or sales call is needed. On 2026-08-19 OpenRouter announced it is joining Stripe. OpenRouter says it will continue to operate as it is, with the same name, product and roadmap, and that existing integrations do not change.

• OpenRouter's free models need no credit card. (From openrouter.ai/blog/tutorials/free-llm-apis-compared, read 2026-10-22.)
• A request over a free-model limit gets a 429 error with the message "Rate limit exceeded". The daily limit counts by UTC day. (From openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits, read 2026-10-29.)
• The paid variant of a model has no platform-level request cap. (From openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits, read 2026-10-29.)
• With a negative credit balance, requests can fail, including for free models; adding credits to bring the balance above zero restores access. (From openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits, read 2026-10-29.)
• OpenRouter does not store your prompts or responses unless you opt in to Private Input & Output Logging or OpenRouter Use of Inputs/Outputs, or content is flagged as potential CSAM. Both opt-ins are off by default. OpenRouter Use of Inputs/Outputs lets OpenRouter use prompt and completion data to improve the product, for a 1% discount on model usage. OpenRouter stores request metadata without prompt or response content. (From openrouter.ai/docs/guides/privacy/data-collection, read 2026-10-30.)
• Each provider has its own data handling policies. OpenRouter works with providers so that prompts are not trained on wherever possible, but there are exceptions. Account settings control routing to providers that may train on your data, separately for paid and free models. If you opt out of training, OpenRouter will not route to those providers. (From openrouter.ai/docs/guides/privacy/provider-logging, read 2026-10-30.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://openrouter.ai/pricing, where it says: “Pay only for what you use with access to 500+ AI models”. How we use this

Rebranded to Respan; keywordsai.co redirects to respan.ai. Free plan: full platform, 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators, 5 prompts. No credit card required. We could not read the page we cite for this offer when we last looked, on 2026-10-31, so we cannot confirm these terms today.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-02 from https://www.respan.ai, where it says: “Point the SDK you already use at one endpoint to reach 1,000+ models”. How we use this

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. PRO ($9/month) gets $2.00 a month. Free accounts get 100GB of private storage and best-effort public storage; substantial storage needs PRO, Team or Enterprise. Note — 2026-10-07: Hugging Face stopped giving free accounts included monthly Inference Providers credits; free users now have to buy credits or upgrade to PRO to call Inference Providers. Source ↗

• A free Hugging Face account needs purchased credits, which take a payment method, to call Inference Providers. (From huggingface.co/docs/inference-providers/pricing, read 2026-10-22.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-providers/pricing, where it says: “route requests through Hugging Face”. How we use this

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. Free access covers turbo-tier models not marked usage-only, such as GLM-5.3-Flash and codestral-latest. Other models, including all image and speech-to-text models, need Pro ($12/mo) or a paid balance. LLM7's limits page no longer lists limits for requests without a token. A text request without a token still worked on 2026-10-19. Note — discovered 2026-10-07: The free tier limits have been significantly reduced. The free tier now allows 60 requests per minute and 100,000 tokens per 24 hours, whereas previously it allowed 10 requests per minute and 500,000 tokens per 24 hours without a token. The free tier with a token now allows 60 requests per minute and 100,000 tokens per 24 hours, whereas previously it allowed 40 requests per minute and 1,000,000 tokens per 24 hours. Source ↗

• LLM7's terms, updated October 15, 2026, say users keep their rights to prompts and outputs and grant LLM7 a licence to process them only to operate, secure, troubleshoot and improve the service. (From github.com/chigwell/llm7.io/blob/main/TERMS.md, read 2026-10-23.)
• The API answers HTTP 429 when a gateway or upstream rate limit is hit. (From docs.llm7.io/api-reference/openapi.json, read 2026-10-23.)

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://llm7.io, where it says: “Connect to leading AI models with one endpoint”. How we use this

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. A 14-day free trial of 'Bifrost Enterprise' is available.

Listed in AI / ML, and on this page because we labelled it model_gateway. We read that on 2026-09-01 from https://getmaxim.ai/, where it says: “The fastest, most resilient, enterprise-grade LLM, MCP, and agent gateway”. How we use this