Free API tiers for LLMs are a moving target: limits change without notice, some providers quietly swap an open free tier for a one-time trial credit, and third-party “free tier comparison” blogs routinely disagree with each other on specifics. This page focuses on what’s stable enough to be useful — what kind of free access each provider offers — rather than exact request-per-minute numbers that may already be wrong by the time you read this.
The short version
- Ongoing free tier, commonly reported as not requiring a card: Google Gemini, Cloudflare Workers AI, Cohere (trial key, non-production use), some of OpenRouter’s free-suffixed models, and Groq (card requirement unconfirmed from an official source).
- Free tier exists but a payment method is reportedly required up front: Mistral AI and SambaNova Cloud — sources disagree on this point, so verify directly.
- One-time trial credit, not an ongoing free tier: OpenAI (disputed whether any signup credit still exists) and Anthropic (commonly reported ~$5, expiring in about 30 days).
- Reportedly ended its open free tier in 2026: Cerebras — now describes a card-backed promotional credit instead.
- Always free, because there’s no vendor involved: Ollama and any other model you run yourself.
Provider by provider
Google Gemini
Has an API free tier, but the reported daily request caps vary a lot by source and by model — some put the lowest-tier models at a few dozen requests a day, others report figures in the low hundreds. Google’s own docs reportedly don’t publish the exact numbers; they show up in your Google AI Studio account instead. Check there rather than trusting any blog’s table, including this one.
Groq
Widely described as having a genuinely free, request-rate-limited tier (limits are set per model and per organization, visible in your Groq console). Multiple sources describe it as not requiring a card, but we didn’t find that stated on an official page, so confirm it yourself at signup.
Cerebras
Reportedly changed in mid-to-late 2026: the previously open free trial now requires a payment method before you get a one-time promotional credit, which expires after a window measured in weeks, not an ongoing allowance. If you’re relying on older guidance that describes Cerebras as free with no card, that guidance is now out of date.
OpenRouter
Doesn’t publish a blanket free tier; instead, individual models are marked free (a :free suffix), and which models carry that tag changes over time. Reported daily caps for free models are modest and apply at the account level, so creating more API keys doesn’t get you more capacity.
Mistral AI
La Plateforme has offered a free “Experiment” mode for prototyping since 2024. Sources disagree on whether a card is required in the 2026 version and on exactly which models are covered (typically the smaller models in the lineup). Mistral’s own console shows your actual limits.
Cohere
Every new account gets a trial API key with a capped number of calls per month across chat, embeddings and reranking. It’s explicitly for evaluation, not production traffic — a separate production key is needed once you’re past that.
Cloudflare Workers AI
Reported consistently across sources as a free daily compute allowance (measured in Cloudflare’s own “Neurons” unit) shared across all models on the platform, resetting daily. This is one of the more stable, consistently-reported free tiers in this list.
SambaNova Cloud
Has a free tier, but at least one source dated August 2026 reports that the no-card signup path was removed around that time, meaning a payment method may now be required even to use the free allowance. Treat this one as actively in flux.
OpenAI and Anthropic
Neither currently offers an ongoing, ignore-your-card-forever free tier comparable to the providers above. What’s commonly reported for both is a small one-time credit for new accounts (figures and even whether it still exists are disputed for OpenAI), which runs out and then requires billing to continue. If your goal is sustained free usage, these two aren’t where to start.
Self-hosted: Ollama and friends
Running a model yourself — Ollama locally, or any OpenAI-compatible server — has no vendor free-tier terms to track at all, because there’s no vendor involved. The tradeoff is your own hardware and the models you can realistically run on it.
Why the exact numbers aren’t worth memorizing
Every provider above can and does change its terms without warning — Cerebras’s 2026 change from open free trial to card-backed credit is a concrete example from this same year. A static page (this one included) is a snapshot, not a live feed. If you’re building something that depends on a specific provider staying free, the only way to know is to keep checking, or to use something that checks for you. That’s the specific problem AI Bakery Gateway’s FreeOnly routing mode is built to handle: it re-reads provider model lists and re-verifies “is this still free?” on an ongoing basis instead of hardcoding an assumption, and it raises an alert the moment a provider bills for something it previously treated as free.
Frequently asked
Which AI API is completely free with no credit card?
As of this writing, Google Gemini, Cloudflare Workers AI, Cohere's trial key, and some of OpenRouter's ":free"-suffixed models don't require a card to start. Groq is also commonly reported as card-free, though we couldn't confirm that from an official page. Card requirements change without notice, so confirm on the provider's own signup page before you build around it.
Does OpenAI have a free API tier?
Not a meaningful one as of late 2026. Reports disagree on whether new accounts still get a small one-time credit; several say that signup credit has been discontinued. Treat the OpenAI API as paid-from-the-start and check platform.openai.com/docs/pricing directly.
Does Anthropic (Claude) have a free API tier?
No ongoing free tier. New API accounts commonly get a small one-time credit (reported as around $5, expiring in about 30 days) to test the API, not a continuing free allowance. Separate programs exist for startups and open-source maintainers, but those aren't a general-purpose free tier.
Is Cerebras still free to use?
Not in the open, no-card way it used to be. Multiple October 2026 sources describe Cerebras moving to a model where a payment method is required up front, with a one-time, time-limited promotional credit rather than an ongoing free allowance. Older articles describing an unconditional free tier are out of date.
What's the easiest way to use several of these free tiers without juggling API keys and rewriting client code for each one?
A self-hosted gateway that speaks one API (OpenAI- or Anthropic-shaped) and routes across the provider accounts you've added is the direct answer — that's what AI Bakery Gateway does, including treating "free" as something it keeps re-verifying rather than assuming. See the home page for details.