The friction matrix
“Free” and “usable in five minutes without handing over your data” are different claims. “unknown” means unconfirmed — and our filters never treat unknown as a pass.
| provider | category | card | phone | membership | steps | time to key | trains on prompts |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| AI21 Labs | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| AI Horde | permanent free | no | no | no | ? | 0m | unknown |
| Aion Labs | permanent free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (International) | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Baseten | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Cerebras Inference | permanent free | no | unknown | no | 3 | 5m | unknown |
| Chutes.ai | conditional free | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Cloudflare Workers AI | permanent free | no | no | no | 5 | 15m | unknown |
| Cohere | conditional free | no | unknown | no | 3 | 5m | unknown |
| DeepInfra | trial credit | yes | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Fireworks AI | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| GitHub Models | permanent free | no | no | no | 2 | 5m | unknown |
| glhf.chat | permanent free | unknown | unknown | unknown | ? | ? | unknown |
| Google AI Studio (Gemini API) | permanent free | no | unknown | no | 3 | 5m | yes |
| Groq | permanent free | no | no | no | 3 | 5m | unknown |
| Hugging Face Inference Providers | permanent free | no | no | no | 3 | 5m | unknown |
| Hyperbolic | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Inference.net | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Kilo Code | permanent free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| LLM7.io | conditional free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Mistral La Plateforme | conditional free | no | yes | no | 4 | 10m | yes |
| Mistral Codestral | permanent free | unknown | yes | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Modal | conditional free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| ModelScope (Alibaba) | permanent free | no | unknown | yes | ? | ? | unknown |
| Nebius AI Studio (Token Factory) | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| NLP Cloud | trial credit | unknown | yes | unknown | ? | ? | unknown |
| Novita AI | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| NVIDIA NIM (build.nvidia.com) | permanent free | no | yes | yes | 5 | 15m | unknown |
| Ollama Cloud | permanent free | unknown | unknown | no | 3 | 5m | no |
| OpenCode Zen | conditional free | unknown | unknown | no | 4 | ? | yes |
| OpenRouter (free models) | permanent free | no | no | no | 3 | 5m | yes |
| OVHcloud AI Endpoints | conditional free | no | no | no | ? | 0m | no |
| Replicate | trial credit | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Requesty | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | no |
| SambaNova Cloud | permanent free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Scaleway Generative APIs | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| SiliconFlow | permanent free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Together AI | conditional free | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Upstage | trial credit | unknown | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Venice.ai | conditional free | no | unknown | no | ? | ? | unknown |
| Vercel AI Gateway | conditional free | no | unknown | yes | ? | ? | unknown |
| Z.ai (Zhipu AI) | permanent free | no | unknown | no | 3 | 5m | unknown |