Free AI Models · Tracked
Every free way to run AI in production · from free-forever open weights to quota-gated hosted APIs and BYOK-powered IDEs. What actually costs nothing, and what the fine print says when you read past the landing page.
Three kinds of free AI
Open weights · you run the model on your own hardware. Inference cost is your electricity. No rate limits, no data sharing, no provider ever.
Provider gives you a fixed daily or monthly request budget. Great for dev and prototyping. Usually trains on your inputs · check the fine print.
The software is free · you bring your own API key. Cursor, Cline, Aider, Continue. You still pay the underlying provider bill, but tooling is zero.
Free forever · open weights
Self-hostable. Apache 2.0 or permissive licenses. Zero ongoing API cost · the only cost is the GPU you rent or buy to serve them.
Free with quota · hosted
Fully hosted · no infrastructure. Rate-limited per day or per minute. Great for dev, risky for prod.
Free with BYOK · bring your own key
Software is free. You pay the underlying API. Best for heavy users who already have keys.
Free by use case
| Use case | Free forever | Free with quota | BYOK tool |
|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | gpt-oss-120b · gpt-oss-20b · Llama 4 | Gemini 3 Flash · Llama 4 Maverick (Groq) · DeepSeek V3.2 (Together) | OpenRouter free models · Cursor free plan · Cline · Aider |
| Reasoning | gpt-oss-120b · Llama 4 · DeepSeek V3.2 | Gemini 3 Pro · Llama 4 Maverick (Groq) · DeepSeek V3.2 (Together) | — |
| Vision | Llama 4 | Gemini 3 Flash · Gemini 3 Pro | — |
| General | gpt-oss-120b · gpt-oss-20b · Mistral Small 3 | Gemini 3 Flash · Grok 4 | OpenRouter free models |
| Multilingual | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B | — | — |
Watch out for
- Training on your inputs · Google AI Studio, Groq free tier, and most $5-credit promos train or log prompts. Paid tiers usually have zero-retention options.
- Rate limits that kill prod · 1500 req/day on Gemini free tier sounds plenty · until you spike. Most free APIs do not have overflow pricing.
- Context cap downgrades · Free tiers usually cap context smaller than paid (e.g., 32K vs 1M). Check before designing your app around the free tier.
- Geographic restrictions · Grok free, Alibaba Qwen direct, and DeepSeek free often have region lockouts or KYC requirements.
- "Free" that is really trial credits · $5 signup credit lasts 300K-700K tokens and then ends. Plan the migration path before you commit.