Free Tier
The no-cost tier for AI APIs · usually rate-limited, quota-capped, or required-to-include-attribution.
The no-cost tier for AI APIs · usually rate-limited, quota-capped, or required-to-include-attribution.
Basic
Gemini has a free tier with generous quota. Groq offers free tier with aggressive rate limits. Together, Fireworks, and DeepInfra all offer small free credits. Most frontier APIs (OpenAI, Anthropic) don't have a true free tier · you get a small signup credit then pay. OpenRouter aggregates many providers and exposes their free tiers centrally.
Deep
Free tier models range: Groq free (limited to 30 req/min), Gemini free (15 req/min, token quotas), Together free $5 credit, Anthropic $5 signup credit, OpenAI $5 signup credit. Sustainable free tier: self-hosted open-weight models (Llama, Qwen, Mistral) on your own GPU. BYOK in apps like Cline + your own Anthropic/OpenAI key is "free app, pay tokens" model. Tracking all this is a headache · see /pricing/free for the live sheet.
Expert
Free tier economics: providers bake in marketing acquisition cost (CAC) and assume a fraction of users convert to paid. The 2025 trend is aggressive free tier expansion by second-tier providers (Groq, Cerebras, Together, Fireworks) to gain API users from OpenAI/Anthropic. Frontier labs can't match because their cost-per-token is higher. Free tier + BYOK + open-weight self-host are the three "zero marginal cost" paths for builders.
Depending on why you're here
- ·Groq free tier uses LPU hardware · sub-100ms TTFT
- ·Gemini free is genuinely useful for prototyping
- ·Open-weight self-host is the only true zero-marginal-cost path
- ·Prototype on Gemini free or Groq free · ship on paid tier
- ·Self-host Llama 4 on a rented GPU for real workloads
- ·See /pricing/free for current free-tier list
- ·Free tiers are marketing · indicates margin capacity for CAC
- ·Second-tier providers (Groq, Together) subsidize aggressively to build share
- ·Free tier expansion compresses paid tier pricing power
- ·Use AI without paying · usually with limits
- ·Good for experimenting and learning
- ·Not a production-ready option for most workloads
Free tier is the best thing to happen to AI education. It's not a production strategy.