---
title: "Free AI coding tools, verified October 2026"
slug: "free-ai-coding-tools"
description: "Free code editors, AI agents, and LLM router credits for developers."
verifiedAt: "2026-10-19"
offers: 64
verifiedOffers: 41
canonical: "https://aifree.dev/free-ai-coding-tools"
---

# Free AI coding tools, verified October 2026

> Free code editors, AI agents, and LLM router credits for developers.

Right now the catalog has 64 coding tools, sorted by how much you get for free. By type, the coding tools split into 36 free tiers, 13 student programs, 12 credit grants, 2 startup programs and 1 fully free tool. 41 of the 64 coding tools were verified by a person, most recently on Oct 19, 2026; 23 are listed and waiting for a first check. 61 of the coding tools need no credit card (AgentRouter Free AI Credits, Cursor Free Plan and Cline Free Models among them); 3 ask for one. In the 7 days to Oct 29, 2026, the coding tools had 10 with changed terms (Token Harbor Free Allowance, OpenRouter Free AI Models and 8 more). First among the coding tools: AgentRouter Free AI Credits ($25), Cursor Free Plan and Cline Free Models. Coming end dates among the coding tools: SmarToken $5 Signup Credit on Dec 31, 2026. Across these coding tools the catalog records 79 free models; the most listed are DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, deepseek-v4-flash and GLM-5.3-Flash.

## The short answer

Yes - several AI coding tools are genuinely free right now, not just on trial.

- **Free plans:** Cursor's Hobby plan (no expiration), Cline's built-in open-weight models, Devin's free tier for individual engineers, CodeRabbit for open-source PRs.
- **Credits:** AgentRouter ($200 for new developers), plus smaller sign-up grants from Token Harbor and YepAPI.
- **Bring your own stack:** the free tiers of the Gemini API, Mistral, and OpenRouter's rotating zero-cost models plug into any editor or CLI agent.

The catch: free plans cap usage, credits eventually run dry, and a few signups demand a card - the table shows which. Students get a separate set of deals on our student hub.

## All coding tools, best free value first

64 offers, 41 verified. Each offer has a Markdown page at `https://aifree.dev/offer/<slug>.md`.

| Offer | What is free | Card | Status | The catch |
| --- | --- | --- | --- | --- |
| [AgentRouter Free AI Credits](https://aifree.dev/offer/agentrouter-free-credits) | $25 | no card | listed | Claude and GPT models come in limited daily batches that run out; only supported coding clients are allowed, and misuse moves accounts to a probation group with doubled rates. |
| [Cursor Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/cursor-hobby-plan) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Usage is limited on the Free plan; Plus ($8/month) covers Grok models only, and third-party models (billed at API list price), cloud agents and Bugbot code reviews start at Premium ($30/month). |
| [Cline Free Models](https://aifree.dev/offer/cline-free-models) | Free credits | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Rotating, limited-time promotions with a usage quota; after the quota ends you need ClinePass ($9.99/mo), usage billing, or your own API key. |
| [Devin Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/devin-free-plan) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Limited model availability and only a light agent quota; higher tiers (Pro $20/mo, Max $200/mo) unlock more. |
| [Trelis AI Grants](https://aifree.dev/offer/trelis-ai-grants) | $500 | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Application, 15-minute interview, and completion summaries required; decisions within 30 days and self-sustaining project ideas preferred. |
| [Clerk student plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/clerk-student) | $240 | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Requires GitHub Student Developer Pack verification; SMS authentication is the only feature excluded from the free Student plan. |
| [Zed Pro for Students](https://aifree.dev/offer/zed-pro-for-students) | $10 | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Requires a GitHub account older than 30 days, a valid university email, and age 18+; excludes Claude Fable, Claude Opus, and GPT Pro models. |
| [SmarToken $5 Signup Credit](https://aifree.dev/offer/smartoken-5-signup-credit) | $5 | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | The $5 is promotional balance that cannot be withdrawn as cash, granted once per eligible account, and new Google signups must pass risk checks before 31 Dec 2026 (UTC+8). |
| [Vercel AI Gateway Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/vercel-ai-gateway-free-tier) | $5 | card | verified 2026-10-12 | The team needs a valid payment method before using free credits; the free tier covers only a subset of models with lower rate limits, and buying credits ends the monthly free credit. |
| [YepAPI Free $5 Credit](https://aifree.dev/offer/yepapi-free-credit) | $5 | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | The $5 credit is one-time; the FAQ states there is no free tier with hard limits, so usage is pay-per-token once the credit runs out. |
| [Browser Use $1 Signup Credit](https://aifree.dev/offer/browser-use-free-credit) | $1 | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Agents bill model tokens plus a 20% service fee plus browser time and traffic; the credit is once per person for eligible signups only. |
| [Inception - 100M Free Tokens for Mercury 3](https://aifree.dev/offer/inception-100m-free-tokens-mercury-2) | 100,000,000 tokens | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | One-time grant for new accounts, then paid usage (Mercury 3: $0.10/1M input, $0.35/1M output at a 50% launch discount). Mercury 2 and 2.5 are no longer open to new users. |
| [IteraCompute free Qwen3.8-27B](https://aifree.dev/offer/iteracompute-free-qwen3-8-27b) | 30,000,000 tokens/month | no card | verified 2026-10-19 | Brand-new operator (domain registered Aug 2026, identity not disclosed) hosting the model itself - treat it as untrusted infrastructure. Free tier has no SLA, queues at peak, and 160K TPM cap. |
| [Free.ai Startup Grant](https://aifree.dev/offer/free-ai-startup-tokens) | 15,000,000 tokens | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Acceptance is application-based, and the grant covers Free.ai's self-hosted models but not premium external models. |
| [IBM watsonx.ai Lite Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/ibm-watsonx-ai-lite-plan) | 300,000 tokens/month | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Rate-limited to 2 inference requests per second, custom foundation models are not available, and you cannot downgrade back to Lite after upgrading. |
| [LLM7.io Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/llm7-io-free-tier) | 100,000 tokens/day | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Token usage counts input plus output combined against the daily cap, and per-second/minute/hour request limits apply; a free token is required for the 100,000 tokens/day allowance. |
| [Kiro for Students](https://aifree.dev/offer/kiro-for-students) | 1,000 credits/month | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Only at select listed universities (133 on 2026-10-20), 18+, with a university email and SheerID check; credits do not roll over and no add-on credits on the student tier. |
| [Netlify free plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/netlify-free-plan) | 300 credits/month | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | New projects start private on free accounts and only become public when you publish; paid tiers start at 1,000+ credits. |
| [Verdent Free Trial](https://aifree.dev/offer/verdent-free-trial) | 100 credits | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | It is a one-off 7-day trial with 100 credits; there is no ongoing free plan, app deployment starts on the $5/month Lite plan, and the page does not state whether a card is required. |
| [WorkBuddy Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/workbuddy-free-plan) | 100 credits/month | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Welcome credits expire after 14 days and monthly credits don't roll over. The daily reward is limited-time, and outside the promo the Free plan has 5,000 completions, 3 tasks and only select models. |
| [Alysis Code Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/alysis-code-free-credits) | 50 credits/month | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Unused credits do not carry over between 30-day periods; the free tier now spans multiple providers (DeepSeek, GLM, GPT-6 Luna, Claude Sonnet) and is subject to fair-use limits. |
| [OpenRouter Free AI Models](https://aifree.dev/offer/openrouter-free-models) | 50 requests/day | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Free models allow 20 requests/minute and 50/day until you have bought 10 credits (then 1,000/day). A negative balance blocks them, and the lineup rotates (24 variants listed, 17 of them chat models). |
| [Freebuff Free Coding Agents](https://aifree.dev/offer/freebuff-free-coding-agents) | 30 hours/day | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Full access is limited to 25 countries - elsewhere (and on VPNs) you get limited mode with 4 models. Ad-funded: prompts may be analyzed to personalize ads, and some models train on your data. |
| [Appwrite Education plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/appwrite-students) | 6 months | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Covers 6 months, applied once after GitHub verification - it does not renew until graduation (some directories still list the old 'until graduation' terms). |
| [BrowserStack student plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/browserstack-github-students) | 12 months | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Requires GitHub Student Developer Pack verification; the license covers one year. |
| [DBeaver academic license](https://aifree.dev/offer/dbeaver-academic) | 12 months | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Annual license: request with your academic details, wait for manual validation, and re-apply each year. |
| [Dify for Education](https://aifree.dev/offer/dify-education) | 12 months | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Built-in models get only 200 one-time credits (no monthly reset), then you add your own API key. The free year does not auto-renew; re-verify each year. |
| [GitHub Copilot free for students](https://aifree.dev/offer/github-copilot-student) | Student program | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | This is Copilot Student, not Pro: auto model selection only, no third-party agents, and a limited AI Credits allowance. Eligibility is re-checked monthly. |
| [GitLab Ultimate free for education](https://aifree.dev/offer/gitlab-for-education) | Student program | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Institution-only: full-time faculty or staff apply with the school email; GitLab does not license individual students. Teaching, learning and non-commercial research only. |
| [TestMu AI (LambdaTest) student plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/lambdatest-github-students) | 12 months | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Requires GitHub Student Developer Pack verification; the product rebranded from LambdaTest to TestMu AI, so names may vary across pages. |
| [New Relic student access](https://aifree.dev/offer/new-relic-students) | Student program | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | You must verify with GitHub Education first, then link it from the Help menu in your New Relic account; access lasts only while you are a student. |
| [Termius free for students](https://aifree.dev/offer/termius-student) | Student program | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | Requires an active GitHub Student Developer Pack; Pro features end when student status lapses. |
| [Visual Studio Dev Essentials](https://aifree.dev/offer/vs-dev-essentials) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-13 | The Azure $200 credit is first-month only and the Azure account requires a credit card; several partner benefits are time-limited trials. |
| [Agnes AI Free API](https://aifree.dev/offer/agnes-ai-free-api) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Free video pricing is a limited-time promotion; free access is rate-limited (about 20 effective RPM text, 1 RPM video) and the docs say all limits may be adjusted in the future. |
| [ChatGPT Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/chatgpt-free) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Only everyday text chats are unlimited; file uploads, image generation, voice, and deep research have separate usage limits. |
| [CodeRabbit Free for Open Source](https://aifree.dev/offer/coderabbit-free-for-open-source) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Free only for public repositories; private repositories require a paid plan. |
| [Evot Free Models](https://aifree.dev/offer/evot-free-models) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Which models are free changes over time, and access is sponsor-funded (Databend Cloud names may appear in ad spaces inside the tool). |
| [Google Gemini Developer API Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/google-gemini-developer-api-free-tier) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Pro previews, image generation (Nano Banana), Veo video, and Imagen are not available on the free tier; per-model rate limits apply. |
| [Mistral AI Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/mistral-ai-free-plan) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Free plan has limited messages, web searches, and coding sessions; Vibe access is limited compared with paid plans. |
| [OpenCode Zen Free Models](https://aifree.dev/offer/opencode-zen-free-models) | Free tier | card | verified 2026-10-12 | All free models are limited-time and you must add billing details and credits; Big Pickle, LL Alpha, Exo and MiMo data may be used to improve the models, and NVIDIA trial endpoints log use. |
| [Token Harbor Free Allowance](https://aifree.dev/offer/token-harbor-free) | Free tier | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | The free allowance size is not published, it resets on a rolling 7-day period, and the free model lineup rotates. |
| [v0 Free for Students (1 Year)](https://aifree.dev/offer/v0-premium-for-students) | Student program | no card | verified 2026-10-12 | Only students at v0's listed active schools qualify, verified with a valid student email; detailed terms are not published on the page. |
| [APInex Free AI Models](https://aifree.dev/offer/apinex-free-ai-models) | 10,000,000 tokens/month | no card | listed | Free models are capped at 5 requests per minute, and each request deducts input plus output tokens times a model weight (2 to 4) from the daily allowance. |
| [Deno Deploy Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/deno-deploy-free-plan) | 1,000,000 requests/month | no card | listed | Monthly caps of 1M requests, 10 CPU-hours and 20 GiB egress; no sandboxes or wildcard subdomains and 1-day log retention. |
| [CleanAPIs free monthly tokens](https://aifree.dev/offer/cleanapis-free-monthly-tokens) | 500,000 tokens/month | no card | changed | Brand-new domain (registered 22 Sep 2026) run by an unidentified operator; it's a third-party relay, so model authenticity and prompt privacy are unproven. |
| [Cloudflare Workers Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-workers-free-plan) | 100,000 requests/day | no card | listed | 10 ms CPU time per invocation and 100,000 requests a day; over the limit, further requests fail until the daily reset at 00:00 UTC. |
| [Cloudflare Workers AI Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-workers-ai-free-tier) | 10,000 credits/day | no card | listed | 10,000 Neurons is small (about 49K output tokens a day on Llama 3.3 70B at the published rate); Kimi, GLM-5 and DeepSeek V4 models need Workers Paid or prepaid credits. |
| [Upstash Vector Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/upstash-vector-free-tier) | 10,000 requests/day | no card | listed | Capped at 10K queries/updates a day and 1,536 dimensions on one free database, with no uptime SLA; adding a card moves the index to pay-as-you-go. |
| [Serper 2,500 Free Google Search Queries](https://aifree.dev/offer/serper-free-queries) | 2,500 requests | no card | listed | One-time allowance, not monthly; after it runs out you buy prepaid credits (from $50 for 50,000). Free-credit expiry and free rate limits are not published. |
| [Brave Search API Free Monthly Credits](https://aifree.dev/offer/brave-search-api-free-credits) | 1,000 requests/month | card | listed | A credit card is required at signup (Brave says to prevent abuse); usage beyond the free $5 per plan is charged from prepaid credits. |
| [Tavily Free Researcher Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/tavily-free-researcher-plan) | 1,000 credits/month | no card | listed | Requests stop when the 1,000 monthly credits run out until the reset on the 1st; development keys are limited to 100 requests per minute. |
| [Neon Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/neon-free-plan) | 100 hours/month | no card | listed | Compute always scales to zero after 5 minutes idle and stops until the next billing period once a project uses its 100 CU-hours; writes are blocked past 1 GB per project or 20 GB in total. |
| [Turso Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/turso-free-plan) | 5 GB | no card | listed | Monthly caps of 500M rows read and 10M rows written, 1-day point-in-time restore, and community support only. |
| [Zilliz Cloud Free Cluster](https://aifree.dev/offer/zilliz-cloud-free-cluster) | 5 GB | no card | listed | Up to 5 collections and 2.5M vCUs a month; advanced features need the Serverless or Dedicated trial. |
| [Pinecone Starter Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/pinecone-starter-plan) | 2 GB | no card | listed | AWS us-east-1 only, 1 project and 2 users, community support only; going past the monthly read/write units means upgrading to Builder ($20/month flat) or Standard ($50/month minimum). |
| [MongoDB Atlas Free Cluster (M0)](https://aifree.dev/offer/mongodb-atlas-free-cluster) | 0.5 GB | no card | listed | 512 MB covers documents plus indexes, throughput is capped at 100 operations per second, there are no backups, and the cluster is paused after 30 days with no connections. |
| [Supabase Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/supabase-free-plan) | 0.5 GB | no card | listed | Free projects are paused after 1 week of inactivity, the database is capped at 500 MB, and there are no automatic backups. |
| [AI Engineering from Scratch](https://aifree.dev/offer/ai-engineering-from-scratch-course) | Fully free | no card | listed | Self-study only: no instructor and no certificate, and progress is saved only in your browser. |
| [BigModel Free GLM Flash Models](https://aifree.dev/offer/bigmodel-free-glm-flash-models) | Free tier | no card | listed | China-facing platform with Chinese-language docs and console; rate limits for the free models are not published on the overview page. |
| [Cloudflare Vectorize Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/cloudflare-vectorize-free-tier) | Free tier | no card | listed | 5 million stored dimensions is about 6,500 vectors at 768 dimensions; free accounts get 100 indexes and 1,000 namespaces per index. |
| [Ollama Cloud Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/ollama-cloud-free-plan) | Free tier | no card | listed | Ollama does not publish the starter amount or name the starter models, and Free allows 1 concurrent request; all other cloud models need purchased usage credits. |
| [Qdrant Cloud Free Tier](https://aifree.dev/offer/qdrant-cloud-free-tier) | Free tier | no card | listed | Single node only, no high availability or automatic backups; unused free clusters are suspended after 1 week and deleted after 4 weeks of inactivity. |
| [Weaviate Cloud Free Plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/weaviate-cloud-free-plan) | Free tier | no card | listed | One cluster per user with a single collection and 100,000 objects; no backups or replication on the free plan. |
| [BAI Limited Free LLM Models & Developer API Access](https://aifree.dev/offer/bai-limited-free-llm-models) | Free tier | no card | listed | B.AI's docs now list Qwen3.8-Flash at 30% and GLM-5.3-Flash at 70% of list price via API and Chat, and show no free promotion; only the chat model list still shows these four models at zero cost. |

## Top picks

- [AgentRouter](https://aifree.dev/offer/agentrouter-free-credits) for most developers: $200 of credit that works with AI-assisted coding tools and LLM routing APIs - enough to evaluate paid-tier models seriously.
- [Cursor's Hobby plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/cursor-hobby-plan) for a permanent editor - the strongest no-expiration free tier.
- [Cline](https://aifree.dev/offer/cline-free-models) if you would rather keep your editor and drop in free open-weight models.
- [Devin's free plan](https://aifree.dev/offer/devin-free-plan) for teams evaluating agents before committing budget.

Shopping for organization-wide seats? The startup hub owns those programs instead.

## How we verify

Rows marked Verified were tested by a person, not scraped. Listed rows are live offers still waiting on their first check.

- **We sign up and claim** the credit or plan with a fresh account, then run real coding tasks against it.
- **We record** what is actually free: usage caps, model lists, and whether a card is demanded.
- **We re-check monthly.** Entries are re-dated when something changes; offers that turn dark or bait-and-switch are pulled and, if dishonest by design, named on our scam list.

## Frequently asked questions

### How many free AI coding tools does aifree.dev list?

64 right now: 41 verified by a person and 23 listed, waiting for a first check. By type: 36 free tiers, 13 student programs, 12 credit grants, 2 startup programs and 1 fully free tool. The newest verification is from Oct 19, 2026.

### Which coding tools need no credit card?

61 of 64, among them AgentRouter Free AI Credits, Cursor Free Plan and Cline Free Models. 3 ask for a card, often to verify identity or to bill usage past the free part. The "Card?" column of the table marks each row.

### What changed in free AI coding tools this week?

In the 7 days to Oct 29, 2026: 10 with changed terms (Token Harbor Free Allowance, OpenRouter Free AI Models and 8 more). Every change is on the hub's changes page and its RSS feed.

### Are these AI coding tools really free?

Yes - each entry was verified with a real signup. Some are permanent free plans like Cursor Hobby or Cline's bundled models; others are one-time credits such as AgentRouter's $200. The "What's free" column states which is which, and the verified date shows when we last confirmed it.

### How long do free coding credits last?

It varies. Sign-up credits like AgentRouter's $200 stay until spent, monthly allowances reset each cycle, and some trials expire on a fixed date. The "Key limits" column and each offer page record the duration we verified.

### Which free AI coding tools work in my country?

Most are globally available, but a few providers restrict sign-ups by region or require a local phone number. We note regional limits on the offer page when providers state them; if your country is not mentioned, check the tool's own signup page.

### What is the best free Copilot alternative?

Cursor Hobby and Cline are the closest free substitutes for GitHub Copilot inside an editor, and AgentRouter's credits can route coding models into almost any agent or CLI. CodeRabbit adds free AI code review for public repositories.

HTML page: https://aifree.dev/free-ai-coding-tools