SiliconFlow Free Credits and Free Models

Overview

SiliconFlow is a model-inference platform offering an OpenAI-compatible API for open-source and commercial text, image, and audio models. The official pricing page states: "Flexible token pricing, high usage limits, and postpaid billing—plus $1 in free credits to get you started!" The pricing FAQ repeats that "You only pay for what you use, and you can start with $1 in free credits."

Free Tier Quotas & Limits

• $1 in free credits on signup, usable on paid models at posted token rates.
• Free models are available separately. The rate-limit documentation states: "The Rate Limits for free models are fixed, while paid models have different Rate Limit metrics based on account usage tiers."
• New accounts start at usage tier L0: 1,000 RPM and 40,000 TPM. Higher tiers follow monthly spend (L1 1,200 RPM / 60,000 TPM through L5 10,000 RPM / 2,000,000 TPM).
• Monthly spending counts both recharged and gifted amounts, and tiers are recalculated by comparing the previous calendar month against the current month to date.
• deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1 and deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-V3 carry an extra limit of 30 requests per hour for all users, plus 100 requests per day for users who have not completed identity verification.
• Rate limits apply per user account, not per API key, and each model has separate limits. Exceeding a limit returns HTTP 429.

How to Get Started

1. Create an account at the SiliconFlow console.
2. Generate an API key on the API Keys page.
3. Point any OpenAI client at the base URL https://api.siliconflow.com/v1 and pass your key.
4. Set a monthly spending limit in the dashboard if you want a hard cap on paid usage.