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SambaNova Cloud — free tier setup
What you get free
A free tier on SambaNova's fast RDU inference, OpenAI SDK-compatible. Per the catalog: "SambaNova grants $5 in initial credits (valid 30 days) on top of the permanent free tier. The free tier itself persists indefinitely with 20 RPM, 20 RPD, and 200K TPD per model. No credit card required."
Source-conflict note, reflected honestly: the seed repos disagree — cheahjs lists SambaNova under "Providers with trial credits" ("Credits: $5 for 3 months"), while mnfst describes a permanent free tier with the $5 layered on top. The official rate-limits doc (fetched this session) supports the standing-free-tier reading: it defines a "Free Tier" (no payment method) at 20 RPM / 20 RPD / 200K TPD per model vs a "Developer Tier" (payment method linked). The $5-credit claim itself was not found on the fetched official pages — treat it as unverified. The gotcha that matters most: 20 requests per DAY per model.
Friction check
| Credit card | no (Free Tier = "no payment method") |
| Phone verification | unknown |
| Org/membership | none |
| Est. time to first key | ~5m (signup → APIs page, 3 steps) |
| 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.