This is the "true" free tier, perfect for hobbyists, students, and sustained projects. These providers offer quotas that refresh daily or monthly, allowing for continuous, low-volume use at no cost.
Groq is the clear market leader for a recurring, high-performance free tier. Its 1,000 daily requests on SOTA models is 20x more generous than Google's offering for its top model, making it viable for real applications.
Setup:
- Sign up at GroqCloud.
- Generate an API key in the developer dashboard.
Note: The 10M token context of Llama 4 is limited to 128k on Groq's API.
Google structures its free offering with clear tiers. The flagship 2.5 Pro is limited to 50 RPD, which is ideal for "showroom" demos of its most advanced features. The real workhorse for developers is the Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite, offering a generous 1,000 RPD. This high-speed, capable model provides a powerful and practical free solution, making it an excellent starting point for building real applications within the Google ecosystem.
Setup:
- Sign in to Google AI Studio.
- Generate an API key.
Tip: Use the 1,000 RPD Flash-Lite for volume tasks; save your 50 RPD Pro calls for high-reasoning.
Mistral offers a massive volume of tokens per month, but throttles the speed to 1 request per second. This is logical: "Prototype all you want, but pay for production speed." The biggest risk is the total lack of official documentation on these free limits; they could change at any time.
Setup:
- Sign up on Mistral's API platform.
- Generate an API key.
OpenRouter provides a free base tier of 50 RPD (Requests Per Day). This "demo" tier is best suited for quick experiments and sampling the platform's wide variety of models. Much like Google's Pro tier, the initial limit is designed more for initial testing than for building a full application. Its main value is providing a single, unified API to try out many different models before committing.
Setup:
- Sign up at OpenRouter.ai.
- Generate an API key.
Note: Also provides a very small credit allowance to test paid models.
The Recurring Credit. This isn't a model provider, but a gateway. Vercel gives you $5 every month to spend on any API it's connected to. This is the spiritual successor to the old OpenAI $5 free trial, but it refreshes. A fantastic, stable perk for Vercel users.
Setup:
- Have a Vercel account.
- Integrate the AI Gateway into your project.
Part 2: The Best One-Time Evaluation Credits (Free Trials)
These are "free trials," not "free tiers." They are designed for short-term enterprise evaluation (PoCs) and expire once the one-time credit is used or a time limit is reached.
The Per-Model Trial Credit. This is one of the most generous and well-structured trials. By giving you a separate 500k-token credit for each model, BytePlus actively encourages you to benchmark them at no cost. The "Free Tokens Only Mode" ensures you are not accidentally charged.
Setup:
- Sign up for a BytePlus ModelArk account.
- Enable "Free Tokens Only Mode" in the dashboard.
The Qwen Benchmarking Trial. This is very similar to BytePlus's model. By offering a separate free quota for each model, Alibaba encourages you to test their proprietary Qwen models. It's a generous trial for anyone benchmarking.
Setup:
- Sign up for an Alibaba Cloud (International) account.
- Navigate to the Model Studio to access the free token quotas.
Note: Credit card required. Manually enable the "Free Quota Only" switch for each model to avoid accidental credit card charges.
The Cloud Ecosystem "Onboarding". This is not a free API tier; it's a new customer acquisition bonus for the entire AWS platform. The $200 credit is generous, but the 6-month expiration date creates urgency, encouraging developers to deploy quickly and become paying customers.
Setup:
- Sign up for a new AWS account (after July 15, 2025).
- Receive $100 credit.
- Complete onboarding tasks (like making a Bedrock call) for the next $100.
Note: Credit card Required.
The Transparent Enterprise Trial. This is the most professional and straightforward trial. It's not for hobbyists. The 1,000-call limit is generous enough for a dev team to build and test a robust PoC for a RAG application (using Embed, Rerank, and Chat) before committing to a paid plan.
Setup:
- Sign up for a Cohere account.
- Generate a Trial API key.
Note: This is an evaluation period, not a permanent free tier.
That's a wrap on the best free tiers out there. For my own projects, I find myself coming back to the Google AI Studio (Gemini) API most often.
If this article helped you, don't forget to leave a clap!