Signup & key guides
From landing page to working API key in under 10 minutes — with the real limits and the gotchas the marketing pages skip. Facts marked “unconfirmed” are exactly that.
Indie · teaser free
AI21 Labs
AI21 Labs — free tier setup
“Credits: $10 for 3 months — Models: Jamba family of models (cheahjs). Free-LLM: "$10 credit | Credit-based | 3”
Free · full guide
AI Horde
AI Horde — free tier setup
“Workers earn kudos for processing jobs, and users spend kudos for higher priority in the queue. Kudos never ex”
Indie · teaser free
Aion Labs
Aion Labs — free tier setup
“mnfst: 'Permanent free tier, no credit card required. 15 RPM, 20K tokens/day.' Aion pricing page: '$0 — A dail”
Indie · teaser free
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (International)
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio (International) — free tier setup
“cheahjs README: 'Credits: 1 million tokens/model'. Free-LLM quota table: '1M tokens/model (trial) | 1M tokens ”
Indie · teaser free
Baseten
Baseten — free tier setup
“Credits: $30”
Indie · teaser free
Cerebras Inference
Cerebras Inference — free tier setup
“Official rate-limits page (Free Trial tier, per model, fetched 2026-07-17): gpt-oss-120b / zai-glm-4.7 / gemma”
Indie · teaser free
Cloudflare Workers AI
Cloudflare Workers AI — free tier setup
“"Our free allocation allows anyone to use a total of 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge." "Neurons are our wa”
Indie · teaser free
Cohere
Cohere — free tier setup
“Official rate-limits docs: 'Trial keys (and prod keys on newer Chat model variants) are limited to 1,000 API c”
Indie · teaser free
DeepInfra
DeepInfra — free tier setup
“Free-LLM quota table: '60 RPM | $5 credit | ~5M tokens (varies) | One-time | 40+ open-source models'. Official”
Indie · teaser free
Fireworks AI
Fireworks AI — free tier setup
“Credits: $1”
Indie · teaser free
GitHub Models
GitHub Models — free tier setup
“Low models (Copilot Free/Pro): 15 requests/minute, 150 requests/day, 8000 in / 4000 out tokens per request, 5 ”
Free · full guide
Google AI Studio (Gemini API)
Google AI Studio (Gemini API) — free tier setup
“Gemini 2.5 Flash: 250,000 tokens/minute, 20 requests/day, 5 requests/minute; Gemini 3.1 Flash-Lite: 250,000 to”
Indie · teaser free
Groq
Groq — free tier setup
“llama-3.3-70b-versatile: 30 RPM, 1K RPD, 12K TPM, 100K TPD; llama-3.1-8b-instant: 30 RPM, 14.4K RPD, 6K TPM, 5”
Free · full guide
Hugging Face Inference Providers
Hugging Face Inference Providers — free tier setup
“Free Users: $0.10 monthly credits, "subject to change"; PRO Users: $2.00; Team or Enterprise Organizations: $2”
Indie · teaser free
Hyperbolic
Hyperbolic — free tier setup
“Credits: $1”
Indie · teaser free
Inference.net
Inference.net — free tier setup
“cheahjs README: 'Credits: $1, $25 on responding to email survey'. Free-LLM quota table: 'Varies | Fair use | F”
Indie · teaser free
Kilo Code
Kilo Code — free tier setup
“~200 req/hr (per free model, per mnfst). Free models with no credit card required. `kilo-auto/free` auto-route”
Indie · teaser free
LLM7.io
LLM7.io — free tier setup
“30 RPM (120 with token)”
Indie · teaser free
Mistral Codestral
Mistral Codestral — free tier setup
“cheahjs README (Mistral (Codestral) section): 'Currently free to use; Monthly subscription based; Requires pho”
Free · full guide
Mistral La Plateforme
Mistral La Plateforme — free tier setup
“Limits (per-model): 1 request/second, 500,000 tokens/minute, 1,000,000,000 tokens/month (cheahjs README). mnfs”
Indie · teaser free
Modal
Modal — free tier setup
“Credits: $5/month upon sign up, $30/month with payment method added — Models: Any supported model - pay by com”
Indie · teaser free
ModelScope (Alibaba)
ModelScope (Alibaba) — free tier setup
“Official limits page (modelscope.cn, rendered 2026-07-18): "Each registered ModelScope user is currently allow”
Indie · teaser free
Nebius AI Studio (Token Factory)
Nebius AI Studio (Token Factory) — free tier setup
“Credits: $1”
Indie · teaser free
NLP Cloud
NLP Cloud — free tier setup
“Credits: $15 — Requirements: Phone number verification — Models: Various open models (cheahjs).”
Indie · teaser free
Novita AI
Novita AI — free tier setup
“Credits: $0.5 for 1 year”
Indie · teaser free
NVIDIA NIM (build.nvidia.com)
NVIDIA NIM (build.nvidia.com) — free tier setup
“40 requests/minute (cheahjs); "Rate-limited (no daily token cap)" (mnfst); "~40 RPM" per model”
Indie · teaser free
Ollama Cloud
Ollama Cloud — free tier setup
“Ollama Cloud measures usage by GPU time, not tokens or requests. Free tier described as 'light usage' with ses”
Free · full guide
OpenCode Zen
OpenCode Zen — free tier setup
“AI gateway with curated models. Free models may use data for improvement.”
Free · full guide
OpenRouter (free models)
OpenRouter (free models) — free tier setup
“20 requests/minute; 50 requests/day; up to 1000 requests/day with $10 lifetime topup. Models share a common qu”
Free · full guide
OVHcloud AI Endpoints
OVHcloud AI Endpoints — free tier setup
“OVHcloud AI Endpoints offers a permanent free anonymous tier (2 requests per minute per IP, per model) with no”
Indie · teaser free
Replicate
Replicate — free tier setup
“Official billing docs: 'You can run select models on Replicate for free, but after a bit you'll be asked to se”
Free · full guide
Requesty
Requesty — free tier setup
“Official pricing (requesty.ai/pricing, fetched 2026-07-18): Free plan $0 — "Start free with 200 requests per d”
Indie · teaser free
SambaNova Cloud
SambaNova Cloud — free tier setup
“SambaNova grants $5 in initial credits (valid 30 days) on top of the permanent free tier. The free tier itself”
Indie · teaser free
Scaleway Generative APIs
Scaleway Generative APIs — free tier setup
“Credits: 1,000,000 free tokens”
Indie · teaser free
SiliconFlow
SiliconFlow — free tier setup
“Permanently free models, no credit card required. 200+ paid models also available. Free models: 30 RPM, 60K TP”
Indie · teaser free
Together AI
Together AI — free tier setup
“Free-LLM quota table: 'Subject to availability | Free research models | Free (Apriel series) | Free forever (r”
Indie · teaser free
Upstage
Upstage — free tier setup
“Credits: $10 for 3 months”
Indie · teaser free
Venice.ai
Venice.ai — free tier setup
“Official rate-limit docs (default tier, text models by size class): XS "500 requests/min, 1,000,000 tokens/min”
Indie · teaser free
Vercel AI Gateway
Vercel AI Gateway — free tier setup
“cheahjs: 'Limits: $5/month'. Vercel pricing docs: 'The free tier includes a subset of models, not the full cat”
Indie · teaser free
Z.ai (Zhipu AI)
Z.ai (Zhipu AI) — free tier setup
“Permanent free models, no credit card required. Rate limit: 1 concurrent request (mnfst data.json). Z.ai prici”
Landing page to working key in under ten minutes. I walked these trails so you don’t have to. — VaiB
