SambaNova Cloud Free API Tier

Overview

SambaNova Cloud serves an OpenAI-compatible inference API on SambaNova's RDU hardware. New accounts receive $5 in free credits, and the Free tier itself requires no credit card. The API base URL is https://api.sambanova.ai/v1, so existing OpenAI client libraries work as a drop-in replacement.

Free Tier Quotas & Limits

• Signup credit: $5, applied automatically and expiring after 30 days.
• Free tier with no payment method linked: 20 RPM, 20 RPD and 200,000 TPD across the listed models.
• Rate limiting triggers on whichever limit is reached first; every response reports remaining and reset values in its headers.
• Up to 25 API keys per account.
• Linking a payment method moves the account to the Developer tier: 60 to 240 RPM and 12,000 to 48,000 RPD depending on model, capped at 20M tokens per day. The $5 credit still applies.

Key Free Models

Free tier model IDs documented by SambaNova:

• DeepSeek-V3.1
• Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct
• gpt-oss-120b
• DeepSeek-V3.2 (preview)
• gemma-4-31B-it (preview)

How to Get Started

1. Sign in at cloud.sambanova.ai and open the API Keys page.
2. Create a key and save it immediately, since keys cannot be viewed again after creation.
3. Point the OpenAI SDK at base_url="https://api.sambanova.ai/v1" with your SambaNova key.
4. Add a payment method only when you want the higher Developer-tier limits.