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Kilo Code — free tier setup
What you get free
A permanent free tier on the Kilo AI Gateway (OpenAI-compatible aggregator), with a rotating pool of :free models. Per the catalog: "~200 req/hr (per free model, per mnfst). Free models with no credit card required. kilo-auto/free auto-router routes to minimax/minimax-m2.5:free (80%) and stepfun/step-3.5-flash:free (20%)." The gotcha: the free pool churns server-side — official docs fetched today list a different free set (stepfun/step-3.7-flash:free, poolside/laguna-m.1:free, nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free) than the catalog's seed list, so always check the live /models endpoint before hardcoding an id. Bonus: free models work anonymously (no key at all) at 200 requests/hour per IP.
Friction check
| Credit card | no |
| Phone verification | unknown |
| Org/membership | none |
| Est. time to first key | ~5m (or 0m — anonymous access works for free models) |
| Trains on your prompts | unknown gateway-wide; varies per routed model (e.g. NVIDIA logs prompts on its :free Nemotron trial models; free routing "may direct requests to providers that log and use prompts/outputs") |
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.