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Inference.net — free tier setup
What you get free
Small one-time trial credits on a distributed GPU network — and the sources disagree on what "free" means here. Per the catalog: "cheahjs README: 'Credits: $1, $25 on responding to email survey'. Free-LLM quota table: 'Varies | Fair use | Free for listed models | Fair use policy | DeepSeek-R1, Llama 3.1 8B/70B'. Official pricing page (Pay as you go plan): '30 req/min rate limit', '1M included Gateway requests'." Category: trial_credit (per cheahjs); the official pricing page shows a $0+ pay-as-you-go plan but states no trial-credit amounts. The gotcha: the bigger $25 credit requires responding to an email survey after signup — watch your inbox.
Friction check
| Credit card | unknown |
| Phone verification | unknown |
| Org/membership | none |
| Est. time to first key | ~5m (default key exists at signup) |
| Trains on your prompts | unknown |
The rest of this guide — the key-obtain walkthrough, first request, the limits that will bite you, and the rotation runbook — ships with the Indie field library. What you’ve read above is the real first section, not a blurred preview; the remainder simply isn’t in this page.