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ModelScope (Alibaba) — free tier setup
What you get free
Read this first: high-friction, CN-jurisdiction provider. API-Inference is free for registered users, but you must bind an Alibaba Cloud account AND complete real-name verification before any API call works (confirmed on the official intro page). No prompt-logging or training policy could be confirmed — treat the data policy as unknown under Chinese data regulations and keep sensitive/production traffic off it until verified. What you get: an OpenAI-compatible free API over popular open models (Qwen, DeepSeek, etc.). Per the catalog: "Current published limits are 2,000 requests/day per user (total across models), with per-model daily quotas dynamically adjusted and capped at 500; concurrency is also dynamically rate-limited." Note: the live limits page (rendered today) now states a 200 calls/model/day default cap (100/day for large models like deepseek-ai/DeepSeek-R1-0528) — tighter than the catalog's 500 ceiling.
Friction check
| Credit card | no |
| Phone verification | unknown — real-name verification of the linked Alibaba Cloud account likely implies phone/ID, unconfirmed |
| Org/membership | yes — mandatory Alibaba Cloud account binding + real-name verification |
| Est. time to first key | 15m–1h+ (real-name verification is the long pole; can be much longer for non-CN users) |
| Trains on your prompts | unknown (CN jurisdiction; no policy confirmed) |
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.