---
title: "Lightning AI Free Plan"
slug: "lightning-ai-free-plan"
provider: "Lightning AI"
status: "verified"
verifiedAt: "2026-10-12"
listedAt: "2026-09-12"
canonical: "https://aifree.dev/offer/lightning-ai-free-plan"
---

# Lightning AI Free Plan

> Up to 30 free credits (about 80 GPU hours) and 1 free Studio

- Provider: [Lightning AI](https://aifree.dev/provider/lightning-ai)
- What is free: 30 credits
- Status: verified by a person on 2026-10-12
- Credit card: not required
- Sign-up: required
- For: Startups
- Claim at: https://lightning.ai/sign-up

## What you get

Lightning AI's free plan includes up to 30 free credits (about 80 GPU hours on interruptible machines) and 1 free Studio; you get 5 free Lightning credits on registration and credits expire after 12 months.

## The catch

Only 5 free credits on registration out of up to 30, credits expire after 12 months, and GPU machines are interruptible.

## Limits

- 5 free credits on registration; up to 30 free credits total
- Credits expire after 12 months
- ~80 GPU hours on interruptible machines at the 30-credit level
- 1 free Studio

## Details

## Overview

[Lightning AI](https://lightning.ai/) is a cloud platform for building, training and serving AI models, with browser-based Studios, single and multi-GPU compute, and hosted model APIs. The Free plan costs $0 and is aimed at students, researchers and hobbyists.

## Free Tier Quotas & Limits

- **Up to 30 free credits**: 5 credits on registration, plus 25 more after adding a card. Unused credits expire after 12 months.
- Up to 30 credits is roughly **80 GPU hours on interruptible machines**.
- Free GPU hours to start vary by accelerator: T4 75, L4 31, A100 40GB 10, A100 80GB 5, L40S 5, RTX PRO 6000 2.
- **1 free active Studio** — CPU Studios run free 24/7 but restart every 4 hours; 32-core CPU Studios are available.
- Single GPUs including L40S, A100, H100 and H200, with up to 2 concurrent GPUs; 80% off on interruptible (spot) instances.
- Persistent storage with a 50 GB limit.
- Model APIs: 15 requests/minute and 120,000 tokens/minute.
- Connect any local IDE or SSH, unlimited background execution, and SDK automation.

## Eligibility

No credit card is needed to use the free tier. A phone number is required at signup to prevent platform abuse.

## How to Get Started

1. Create an account at [lightning.ai/sign-up](https://lightning.ai/sign-up) with email, Google, or GitHub.
2. Verify your phone number to unlock the initial free credits.
3. Open a Studio, pick a GPU, and start from a template or your own repository. Note that the free Studio restarts every 4 hours while your files persist.

## More

- HTML page: https://aifree.dev/offer/lightning-ai-free-plan
- Change history: https://aifree.dev/offer/lightning-ai-free-plan/history
- How it was verified: https://aifree.dev/offer/lightning-ai-free-plan/verification
- More in [Free AI coding tools](https://aifree.dev/free-ai-coding-tools.md)
- JSON: https://aifree.dev/api/v1/offers/lightning-ai-free-plan