Free AI API credits, verified October 2026
One-time credit grants and permanent free tiers for LLM, speech, and image APIs.
74 offers checked and verified · Browse all 231 free AI offers · Changes (RSS)
The free AI API credits list holds 89 API credits today, best free value first. By type, the API credits split into 37 credit grants, 36 free tiers, 11 startup programs, 3 student programs, 1 free trial and 1 fully free tool. 74 of the 89 API credits were verified by a person, most recently on Oct 19, 2026; 15 are listed and waiting for a first check. 79 of the API credits need no credit card (AgentRouter Free AI Credits, Google Gemini Developer API Free Tier and Groq Free Tier among them); 10 ask for one. In the 7 days to Oct 29, 2026, the API credits had 20 with changed terms (Token Harbor Free Allowance, Scaleway Generative APIs Free Tier and 18 more). At the top of the API credits table: AgentRouter Free AI Credits ($25), Google Gemini Developer API Free Tier and Groq Free Tier. Coming end dates among the API credits: SmarToken $5 Signup Credit on Dec 31, 2026.
The short answer
Free API access falls into three groups.
- Permanent free tiers: Google's Gemini API, Groq, Mistral's free plan, OpenRouter's rotating zero-cost models, llm7.io (1M tokens a day), Z.AI's free GLM models.
- One-time credits: AgentRouter $200, Deepgram $200 (speech), Speechmatics $100, AssemblyAI $50, Cerebras $5, YepAPI $5.
- Big token grants: Voyage AI 200M embedding tokens per model, Inception 100M Mercury tokens, Jina AI 10M.
The catch: free tiers rate-limit hard, one-time credits expire or stop when spent, and model availability rotates. Everything below was claimed and tested with a real account; the table shows what is free, the limits we hit, and whether a card was required.
All API credits, best free value first
Tick 2–4 offers to compare them side by side.
| Compare Tool | What's free | Key limits | Card? | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| $25one-time | $25 per daily check-in · $50 per invite · Claude and GPT models: limited daily supply,… More: AgentRouter Free AI Credits | No card | Listed | |
| Free tierongoing | No expiration · Free models include gemini-3.8-flash, gemini-3.6-flash,… More: Google Gemini Developer API Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Per-organization limits tracked as RPM, RPD, TPM, TPD · openai/gpt-oss-120b and… More: Groq Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 50 requests/dayresets daily | 20 requests per minute on all free variants · 50 requests per day for accounts that have… More: OpenRouter Free AI Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 100K tokens/dayresets daily | 100,000 tokens per 24 hours with a free token (input + output combined) · Free token: 1… More: LLM7.io Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $50Kone-time | Build (up to $5M raised): up to $15K credits + 3 hours engineering · Scale ($5M-$10M… More: Together AI Startup Accelerator | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $25Kone-time | Up to $25,000 for Dedicated Deployments or Training · Up to $2,500 for Model APIs ·… More: Baseten AI Startup Program | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $20K6 months | Up to $20,000 in API credits for a 6-month period · API usage only; no Claude web app or… More: Anthropic AI for Science Program | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $5,500one-time | 33,000,000 characters (~680+ hours of Agents usage) over 12 months · Startups and small… More: ElevenLabs Startup Grants | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $1,000one-time | Start at $1,000; $2,500 unlocks at $1,000/mo spend; $5,000 at $2,500/mo spend · Open to… More: fal Startup Program | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $1,000one-time | Starter: up to $1,000 in free credits, no deposit, awarded in $100 steps · Growth:… More: Runware Startup Program | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $200one-time | $200 credit valid for 30 days only · 40+ Lite-plan products stay free indefinitely | Card | Verified Oct 13, 2026 | |
| $200one-time | Standard voices: 5 million characters/month (no stated time limit) · Neural voices: 1… More: Amazon Polly Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $200one-time | Applies to the Pay As You Go plan · No expiration on the credit · No minimums · Moves to… More: Deepgram Free $200 Credit | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $200one-time | More than 20 open-weight models (LLM, TTS/STT, document analysis, image analysis) ·… More: OVHcloud AI Endpoints Free Tier | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $100one-time | $100 one-time AI token credits per new account · Usable across all supported models in… More: AkashML $100 Free AI Token Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $100one-time | $100 in API credits granted on approval · $5 company verification payment required… More: EmberCloud for Startups | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $100one-time | $100 sign-up credit lasts 12 months · 2 concurrent real-time sessions on the Free tier ·… More: Speechmatics $100 Free Credit | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $90one-time | 80+ products, most trials running 1-12 months · ECS: USD 90 free credits valid 3 months… More: Alibaba Cloud Free Trial | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $50one-time | Free-tier streaming concurrency: 5 new streams per minute · Free-tier accounts may… More: AssemblyAI Free Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $20one-time | $10 signup credit plus a one-time $10 onboarding bonus · $10 free balance reset monthly… More: Exa Free Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $20one-time | New accounts start on the free tier with $20 in credits · 10,000 characters per month… More: Hume AI Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $20one-time | 2,000 free credits per account on first API key generation · API concurrency: 10 tasks… More: Tripo AI Free API Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $10one-time | $10 one-time credit for new accounts · Valid for 3 months · Covers API usage, SDK, and… More: AI21 Labs Free Trial | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $10one-time | $2 instant on OAuth sign-in, $8 after contacting support · Credit is spendable on any… More: Helyx AI Free Signup Credit | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $5one-time | $5 credits expire 30 days after activation · Verified payment method required to… More: Cerebras Inference Free Trial | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $5one-time | $5 one-time credits per workspace · 100 queries/minute; 6,000 uploads/minute for… More: Mixedbread Free Starter Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $5one-time | One-time credit per eligible account · Promotional balance; cannot be withdrawn as cash… More: SmarToken $5 Signup Credit | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $5one-time | $5 of credits every 30 days per team · Free credits start on your first AI Gateway… More: Vercel AI Gateway Free Tier | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $5one-time | One-time $5 credit; no recurring free tier · 203 models included with one API key ·… More: YepAPI Free $5 Credit | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $1one-time | $1 once per person for eligible Google, GitHub, or Microsoft signups · No card required;… More: Browser Use $1 Signup Credit | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $1one-time | Valid for 30 days · Bank card required to set up a billing account · Card automatically… More: Nebius Token Factory $1 Trial Credit | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $1one-time | Free-model rate limits are fixed · New accounts start at usage tier L0: 1,000 RPM /… More: SiliconFlow Free Credits and Free Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 50B tokens | 50,000,000,000 tokens valued at DeepSeek V4 Flash prices · Credits expire 1 year after… More: DeepInfra DeepStart 50 Billion Free Inference Tokens | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 200M tokens | 200M free tokens each: voyage-4-large, voyage-4, voyage-4-lite, voyage-code-4,… More: Voyage AI Free Embedding and Reranking Tokens | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 100M tokens | 100M free tokens per new account, one-time · No payment details required to start ·… More: Inception - 100M Free Tokens for Mercury 3 | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 30M tokens/monthresets monthly | 30M tokens/month on the free tier (input + output, incl. reasoning) · 128K context,… More: IteraCompute free Qwen3.8-27B | No card | Verified Oct 19, 2026 | |
| 15M tokens | 15,000,000 Free.ai tokens granted per accepted startup · Granted tokens have no expiry… More: Free.ai Startup Grant | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 10M tokens | 10M tokens per new API key, shared across Reader, Embeddings, Reranker, Classifier,… More: Jina AI 10M Free API Tokens | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 7M tokens/dayresets daily | Resetting at 07:00 WIB (00:00 UTC) · 15 requests per minute · Three free models: Agnes… More: NaraRouter Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 1M tokens | Typically 1,000,000 tokens per model, each model with its own quota · Valid 90 days from… More: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio Free Token Quota | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 1M tokens | Serverless, token-billed models · 60 minutes free audio transcription · Free quota split… More: Scaleway Generative APIs Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 300K tokens/monthresets monthly | 20 CUH per month for watsonx.ai Runtime · 1,000 tokens = 1 RU · 100 document text… More: IBM watsonx.ai Lite Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 100K tokens/dayresets daily | Basic and free models only; premium models require a paid plan · Unlimited Playground… More: AnyAPI Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 20K credits/monthresets monthly | $1 prepaid agents balance per month · Sonic-3.6 TTS: about 27 minutes/month, 2… More: Cartesia Free Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 10K credits/monthresets monthly | Shared across all products · No commercial license · No instant or professional voice… More: ElevenLabs Free Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 4,000 credits/monthresets monthly | 4 months of free Project Plan access · Student verification required · Covers research,… More: Tavily Student Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 1,000 requests/monthresets monthly | Trial API keys are rate limited (specific limits not published on the pricing page) ·… More: Cohere Free Trial API | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 1,000 credits/monthresets monthly | No overage — calls return 401 when credits are depleted · 2 concurrent API requests per… More: Context.dev Free Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 1,000 credits/monthresets monthly | 1 credit = 1 page on basic scrape, crawl, or map · Search costs 2 credits per 10… More: Firecrawl Free Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 1,000 requests/dayresets daily | 1,000 requests/day per account, shared across all standard free models, resets 00:00 UTC… More: Infron Free AI Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 200 requests/dayresets daily | Free plan: 200 requests/day, no credit card required · 13 models at $0 in/out pricing ·… More: Requesty Free Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 200 requests/dayresets daily | 200 requests/day per account, resetting at 00:00 UTC · 20 requests/minute (rolling… More: Routeway Free Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 50 credits/monthresets monthly | Unused credits do not carry over · 100 credits equal $1 of usage · Free tier covers… More: Alysis Code Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 25 credits | Granted on Google social-login signup · One-time grant for initial testing and evaluation | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 15 images/dayresets daily | 10 text prompts per day · 15 image prompts per day · Base AI models only (full catalog… More: Venice AI Free Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| 10 credits/dayresets daily | 10 credits per day per account, issued daily · Credit cost per call varies by model ·… More: Coze Free Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Free text models: agnes-2.5-flash, agnes-3.0-flash · Free image models:… More: Agnes AI Free API | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Free models: DeepSeek-V4-Flash, DeepSeek-V4-Flash-Vision-Exp, Qwen3.8-Flash-Next,… More: AMD Radeon Cloud Free APIs | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free credits | One-time grant for new users, not a recurring allotment · Amount not published ·… More: Claude API New User Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free credits | Rotating, limited-time free model promotions · Limited usage quota per promotion (amount… More: Cline Free Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Catalog of free and low-cost models; which models are free changes over time · Unlimited… More: Evot Free Models | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Startup program | Build Credits expire after 1 year · Credits auto-apply to usage charges; pay-as-you-go… More: Fireworks for Startups | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free credits | One-time 50 EUR credit at signup, valid for one year, no monthly reset · Roughly 312 h… More: Gladia Free Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Studio Free mode: API access with no card, within per-model usage and rate limits · No… More: Mistral AI Free Plan | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Featured free models: nemotron-3.5-super-vl-120b-a12b, nemotron-3.5-lightning-30b-a3b,… More: NVIDIA NIM Free Inference Endpoints | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Limited time — every free model is marked 'available on OpenCode for a limited time' ·… More: OpenCode Zen Free Models | Card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Fully freeongoing | Key types: sk_ secret keys with configurable budgets; legacy raw pk_ keys are… More: Pollinations Free API | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Free for a limited number of runs; exact cap not published · Free models (11):… More: Replicate Try for Free | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free credits | INR 100 one-time signup credits · Credits never expire and work across all Sarvam APIs ·… More: Sarvam AI Free API Credits | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Startup program | 6-12 months of credits matched to your scale · Up to 12 months of credits · Rolling… More: Sarvam AI Startup Program | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Free models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, MiMo V2.6 Flash, TH-Rudder (rotating lineup) · Free… More: Token Harbor Free Allowance | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Free models: DeepSeek V4.1 Flash, MiMo V2.6 Flash, TH-Rudder (rotating lineup) · Free… More: Token Harbor Free Allowance | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Student program | Up to 1 year of free access · Program runs from approval until March 31, 2027, 11:00 PM… More: Upstage AI Initiative Free Access | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| Free tierongoing | Free models: GLM-4.7-Flash, GLM-4.5-Flash, GLM-4.6V-Flash (input, cached input, cached… More: Z.AI Free API Tier | No card | Verified Oct 12, 2026 | |
| $1one-time | 100 credits ($1) per month, replenishing up to 100 credits · Card verification with a… More: Experiential Labs Free Plan | Card | Listed | |
| 10M tokens/monthresets monthly | 10M weighted tokens per day on free models · 5 requests per minute on the free plan ·… More: APInex Free AI Models | No card | Listed | |
| 500K tokens/monthresets monthly | 80 requests/minute and 100,000 tokens/minute on the free plan · Free plan covers all… More: CleanAPIs free monthly tokens | No card | Re-checking | |
| 500K tokens | No expiration (subject to change) · 500K tokens per LLM model, 2M video tokens, 200… More: BytePlus Free Trial | No card | Listed | |
| 10K credits/dayresets daily | 10,000 Neurons per day free on Workers Free and Workers Paid; resets daily at 00:00 UTC… More: Cloudflare Workers AI Free Tier | No card | Listed | |
| 2,500 requests | 2,500 free queries for new accounts, one-time · No credit card required · Credits are… More: Serper 2,500 Free Google Search Queries | No card | Listed | |
| 1,000 requests/monthresets monthly | $5 in free credits every month on each plan, applied automatically · Search plan: $5 per… More: Brave Search API Free Monthly Credits | Card | Listed | |
| 1,000 credits/monthresets monthly (1st) | 1,000 API credits per month on the free Researcher plan · Credits reset on the first day… More: Tavily Free Researcher Plan | No card | Listed | |
| 50 requests/dayresets daily | No expiration · 10 requests/minute and 50 requests/day (20 RPM and 800/day after $20 in… More: OrcaRouter Free AI Models & API Credits | No card | Listed | |
| 2 GB | Up to 2 GB storage, 5 serverless indexes, 100 namespaces per index · Up to 1M read units… More: Pinecone Starter Plan | No card | Listed | |
| Free tierongoing | Free text models: GLM-4.7-Flash (200K context, 128K output), GLM-4.5-Flash (128K/96K),… More: BigModel Free GLM Flash Models | No card | Listed | |
| Free tierongoing | Starter usage amount not published; resets monthly from the signup date and does not… More: Ollama Cloud Free Plan | No card | Listed | |
| Startup program | Current cohort is full; no new applications right now · Applications still in review… More: Claude for Startups | No card | Re-checking | |
| Free tierongoing | Limited time · Free models: Hy3, Mimo2.5, GLM 5.3 Flash, Qwen3.8 Flash | No card | Listed |
Top picks
- Gemini API free tier or Groq for an always-on project - both permanent, with published, stable limits you can plan around.
- OpenRouter's free models or llm7.io for model variety without commitment - many LLMs through one OpenAI-compatible endpoint at $0 (llm7.io serves 1M tokens a day).
- Deepgram's $200 credit for speech APIs - the most generous grant we have verified, no card needed.
- Voyage AI's embedding grant for raw token volume - 200M tokens per model, the largest no-strings grant; AgentRouter's $200 remains the biggest one-time all-rounder.
How we verify
We claim every credit with a fresh account and run our own test requests against it.
- We record the rate limits we actually hit, the models that answered, and whether the card field was skippable at signup.
- We re-check balances and quotas monthly; the verified date on each row is the day we last confirmed the numbers.
- We pull providers that quietly throttle, de-scope, or never deliver the advertised credits - and name them on our scam list where it looks intentional.
Frequently asked questions
How many free AI API credits does aifree.dev list?
89 right now: 74 verified by a person and 15 listed, waiting for a first check. By type: 37 credit grants, 36 free tiers, 11 startup programs, 3 student programs, 1 free trial and 1 fully free tool. The newest verification is from Oct 19, 2026.
Which API credits need no credit card?
79 of 89, among them AgentRouter Free AI Credits, Google Gemini Developer API Free Tier and Groq Free Tier. 10 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 API credits this week?
In the 7 days to Oct 29, 2026: 20 with changed terms (Token Harbor Free Allowance, Scaleway Generative APIs Free Tier and 18 more). Every change is on the hub's changes page and its RSS feed.
Are these free APIs really $0?
Yes - each was called with a real key. Permanent tiers cost nothing within their rate limits; credit grants cover your usage until the balance runs out. The verified date shows when we last confirmed each row.
How long do free API credits last?
Permanent free tiers do not expire but rate-limit daily and monthly. One-time credits typically last until spent, and some trials expire after 30-90 days. The "Key limits" column records the duration each provider states.
Which free LLM API is best for production?
None of the free tiers carry a production SLA. The most dependable starting points are Gemini's free tier and Groq, because their limits are published and stable. Treat one-time credit grants as evaluation budgets rather than infrastructure.
What is the difference between a free tier and free credits?
A free tier is ongoing access within rate limits; free credits are a balance you spend down, after which you pay or stop. The "What's free" column labels every row accordingly.
Side-by-side comparisons
Ranked charts
Step-by-step guides
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Last verified Oct 19, 2026 · 89 offers checked · 76 re-checked this month · Providers that fail our checks land on the scam list.