SiliconFlow free tier includes Pay-as-you-go model inference… Not verified — our read of 2026-09-16 found the page did not mention this offer, which is not evidence it ended, and our read of 2026-11-02 did not confirm the terms. Compare with 27 alternatives in AI / ML.

SiliconFlow Free Tier 2026

Subtypes in AI / ML: llm_api — the vendor runs language or multimodal models on its own infrastructure and sells calls to them by model name; you send a prompt and receive a completion. 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.

Limits, pricing history, and 27 alternatives. Catalogue date August 2026. Last updated 2026-11-02.

SiliconFlow's free tier offers Pay-as-you-go model inference… We are not rating this offer today; this page's Last read note says why.

One of 89 AI / ML services we track. See our full AI / ML Free Tier Comparison →

Tier

Free

Free Tier Details

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 the speech recognition models XingChenAGI/XingChenGSR-V1.0, XingChenAGI/XingChenASR-V3.2-Ultra, XingChenAGI/XingChenASR-Diarize-V3.0, XingChenAGI/XingChenASR-V3.2 and FunAudioLLM/SenseVoiceSmall. Qwen3-ASR-1.7B is paid at ¥0.00022 per second of audio. 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-20b $0.04/$0.18; gpt-oss-120b $0.05/$0.45; DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash $0.15/$0.60.

SiliconFlow's international docs say free models have fixed rate limits, paid models' limits depend on the account's usage tier, and new users start at tier L0, which allows 1,000 requests and 40,000 tokens a minute. (From docs.siliconflow.com/en/userguide/rate-limits/rate-limit-and-upgradation, read 2026-10-23.)
SiliconFlow's international terms say it will not access interaction data, has no obligation to store it, and uses it only to provide the service. (From docs.siliconflow.com/en/legals/terms-of-service, read 2026-10-23.)
The API answers HTTP 429 when a rate limit is hit. (From docs.siliconflow.com/en/faqs/error-code, read 2026-10-23.)

When You'll Outgrow SiliconFlow's Free Tier

When your usage exceeds the free tier limits, you'll need to upgrade.
At that point, the 27 alternatives in AI / ML are each listed with the free tier they offer, so you can compare what they give you against what you have outgrown.

Pricing Change History (0 recorded)

No recorded pricing changes for SiliconFlow. We publish no change we refused to record, so treat the empty history as a statement about our records, not about this vendor's pricing.

View all 513 pricing changes across all vendors →

Alternatives in AI / ML

How SiliconFlow compares against every one of the 27 we list, not against a selection of them. A surface with room for every member of a tied set may rotate their order. A surface with room for only some of them names none of them, because which ones it named would be the claim, and a claim seeded on the date is not the one we serve tomorrow. How we decide this.

Service	Free Tier	Stability
SiliconFlow	Free	unrated
Cloudflare Workers AI	Free 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.	caution
Lumenfall.ai	Free 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).	stable
OpenRouter	Free AI model router. Free plan: 50 requests a day, no BYOK.	stable
Hugging Face	Free 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.	caution
Pollinations.AI	Free 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.	caution
Keywords AI	Free Rebranded to Respan; keywordsai.co redirects to respan.ai. Free plan: full platform, 100k logs, 1k scores, 5 datasets, 2 evaluators, 5 prompts.	source unconfirmed
NVIDIA NIM	Free 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,…	stable
LLM7.io	Free 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.	caution
Cohere	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.	stable
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, 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…	stable
Groq	Free 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.	caution
Maxim AI	Free 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.	stable
Hetzner Inference API	Free 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.	stable
Zhipu AI	Free China-based GLM model API. The price list marks these models free: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4-Flash-250414 and GLM-Z1-Flash (text); GLM-4.6V-Flash, GLM-4V-Flash and GLM-4.1V-Thinking-Flash (vision); CogView-3-Flash (image); CogVideoX-Flash (video).	source unconfirmed
Portkey	Free Control panel for Gen AI apps featuring an observability suite & an AI gateway. Send & log up to 10,000 requests for free every month.	unrated
Fireworks AI	Free Credits Inference platform for open models, with serverless per-token pricing and on-demand GPU deployments billed per GPU second. Fireworks offers $1 in free credits to get started.	unrated
Baseten	Basic (Free Credits) ML model deployment platform. New workspaces receive credits for testing and deployment; Baseten does not state the amount.	unrated
Cerebras	Trial Ultra-fast LLM inference API — no permanent free tier. New accounts get $5 in free credits after adding a verified payment method, expiring 30 days after they are granted.	risky
GitHub Models	Retired GitHub retired GitHub Models on 2026-07-30, so there is no free tier. GitHub's own documentation states "GitHub Models has been retired."	source unconfirmed
Together AI	Pay-as-you-go Inference API for open-source models, billed per token. Together AI does not currently offer free trials; access requires a minimum $15 credit purchase for an organization's first purchase ($5 for later purchases), and the platform is fully prepaid.	unrated
Mistral AI	Pay-as-you-go Since about 2026-11-05, Mistral's Free plan covers Vibe and Studio and does not include API access. Creating API keys and calling the API require billing activation and pay-as-you-go with prepaid credits.	unrated
Ollama Cloud	Pay-as-you-go Cloud-hosted Ollama for running open-source LLMs. Between October 26 and 27, 2026, Ollama replaced its Free plan, which included starter usage credits, with a $0 Pay as you go plan.	unrated
Anthropic API	Pay-as-you-go Claude API with usage-based pricing per million tokens (input/output). Claude Fable 5.2 $8/$40.	unrated
MiniMax	Pay-as-you-go MiniMax sells API access pay-as-you-go on platform.minimax.io. Its pricing pages list no free API allowance; one docs page mentions a free quota for new pay-as-you-go users but gives no amount.	unrated
DeepSeek API	Pay-as-you-go Pay-as-you-go LLM API with no free tier, billed from a prepaid balance. DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash (deepseek-flash): $0.30/M input, $1.20/M output at peak.	unrated
xAI	Pay-as-you-go Grok API, pay as you go: sign up at console.x.ai, then load it with credits. grok-4.7 $2.00/$6.00 (per 1M tokens, under 200k prompt tokens).	unrated
OpenAI	Pay-as-you-go AI API platform. One model is priced Free in OpenAI's own table: the moderation model omni-moderation-latest.	unrated

Left out of this list: Brave Search API (shares no subtype with this product), Pinecone (shares no subtype with this product), Qdrant (shares no subtype with this product), Deepgram (shares no subtype with this product), Kaggle (shares no subtype with this product), Roboflow (shares no subtype with this product), Scale AI (shares no subtype with this product), AssemblyAI (shares no subtype with this product), Replicate (shares no subtype with this product), Weights & Biases (shares no subtype with this product), Comet ML (shares no subtype with this product), Clarifai (we have not classified this record), Neptune.ai (we have not classified this record), Labelbox (shares no subtype with this product), Google Colab (shares no subtype with this product), Composio (shares no subtype with this product), DeepAR (none of this category's subtypes apply), OCR.Space (shares no subtype with this product), Parseur (shares no subtype with this product), Reducto (shares no subtype with this product), SerpApi (shares no subtype with this product), Tavily AI (shares no subtype with this product), paperspace (shares no subtype with this product), Arize AX (shares no subtype with this product), Audio Enhancer (none of this category's subtypes apply), Braintrust (shares no subtype with this product), Clair (none of this category's subtypes apply), Langfuse (shares no subtype with this product), LangSmith (shares no subtype with this product), Langtrace (we have not classified this record), LangWatch (shares no subtype with this product), Mediaworkbench.ai (none of this category's subtypes apply), Othor AI (none of this category's subtypes apply), ReportGPT (none of this category's subtypes apply), Zenable (none of this category's subtypes apply), Exa (shares no subtype with this product), GPU-Bridge (we have not classified this record), Google Vertex AI Agent Engine (we have not classified this record), Google Vector Search 2.0 (shares no subtype with this product), Google Gemini Embedding 2 (shares no subtype with this product), Alibaba Cloud Qwen Code (none of this category's subtypes apply), E2B (shares no subtype with this product), Modal (shares no subtype with this product), ElevenLabs (we have not classified this record), Stability AI (we have not classified this record), Daytona (shares no subtype with this product), Blaxel (shares no subtype with this product), Novita Sandbox (shares no subtype with this product), Runloop (shares no subtype with this product), Mem0 (shares no subtype with this product), Zep (shares no subtype with this product), Letta (we have not classified this record), Supermemory (shares no subtype with this product), Cognee (shares no subtype with this product), Serper (shares no subtype with this product), Linkup (shares no subtype with this product), Parallel (shares no subtype with this product), Jina AI (shares no subtype with this product), You.com (shares no subtype with this product), Cloudflare AI Search (we have not classified this record), Valyu (shares no subtype with this product). Each is still listed in AI / ML, with the vendor's own words we read that from on its page. How we decide this.

See full comparison →

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 list above is every one of the 27 entries in that order, not a prefix of it. The algorithm is published, so anyone can reproduce this page's order without asking us.

date: 2026-11-14
query_key: alternatives:AI / ML:SiliconFlow
seed: 578a51c9181d986c83ec657e116fe647f0cd602b5cc8186068265863ae972b7f
tie_count: 13

Watch SiliconFlow for Pricing Changes

We do not push notifications. Every change we record is readable the moment it lands, and the JSON answer carries an ETag — send it back as If-None-Match and an unchanged answer costs one 304.

curl https://agentdeals.dev/api/changes?vendor=SiliconFlow
curl https://agentdeals.dev/pricing-changes/feed.xml?vendor=SiliconFlow

API docs →

Frequently Asked Questions

Is SiliconFlow free?

Our stored record says SiliconFlow offers a free tier: Free. 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-041... We have not confirmed these terms against the source we cite, so treat them as unverified.

What is SiliconFlow's free tier?

Our stored record calls SiliconFlow's free tier "Free". 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 the speech recognition models XingChenAGI/XingChenGSR-V1.0, XingChenAGI/XingChenASR-V3.2-Ultra, XingChenAGI/XingChenASR-Diarize-V3.0, XingChenAGI/XingChenASR-V3.2 and FunAudioLLM/SenseVoiceSmall. Qwen3-ASR-1.7B is paid at ¥0.00022 per second of audio. 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-20b $0.04/$0.18; gpt-oss-120b $0.05/$0.45; DeepSeek-V4.1-Flash $0.15/$0.60. We have not confirmed these terms against the source we cite, so treat them as unverified. SiliconFlow's international docs say free models have fixed rate limits, paid models' limits depend on the account's usage tier, and new users start at tier L0, which allows 1,000 requests and 40,000 tokens a minute. (From https://docs.siliconflow.com/en/userguide/rate-limits/rate-limit-and-upgradation, read 2026-10-23.) SiliconFlow's international terms say it will not access interaction data, has no obligation to store it, and uses it only to provide the service. (From https://docs.siliconflow.com/en/legals/terms-of-service, read 2026-10-23.) The API answers HTTP 429 when a rate limit is hit. (From https://docs.siliconflow.com/en/faqs/error-code, read 2026-10-23.)

Is SiliconFlow's free tier reliable?

We are not rating SiliconFlow's free tier today; this page's Last read note says why.

Is SiliconFlow's free tier good for production?

SiliconFlow's free tier is usable for prototyping and development. We are not rating it today; this page's Last read note says why.

What changed in SiliconFlow's pricing?

We publish no change we refused to record, so we cannot tell you that nothing changed.

What are the best free alternatives to SiliconFlow?

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 27 free alternatives to SiliconFlow in AI / ML, each listed above with its tier. Of those, 13 carry no recorded demerit and are indistinguishable under every signal we hold, so they are listed in an order that rotates daily, 5 are demoted with the reason named, 9 are listed last behind a stated gate. Our ranking rule is published at /criteria.

When will I outgrow SiliconFlow's free tier?

When your usage exceeds the free tier limits, you'll need to upgrade. When you outgrow the free tier, evaluate paid plans against alternatives — sometimes a competitor's free tier covers what you need.

What category is SiliconFlow in?

SiliconFlow is categorized under AI / ML on AgentDeals. We list 27 other AI / ML services alongside it, every one of them on this page with its free tier and the stability we publish for it.