Compare / Free plans
Best free LLM APIs
Best for a published daily quota: Cloudflare Workers AI, with 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge, reset at 00:00 UTC.
| Tool | What you get | Limits | Card required | The catch | Source |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Google AI Studio | Free input and output tokens for some Gemini models plus Google AI Studio access. | Rate limits per model; data may be used to improve products | Not stated by vendor | Free-tier content is used to improve Google products; newest models such as Gemini 4 Argon are not available. | ai.google.dev/pricing checked 2026-10-14 |
| Groq | Free API plan with per-model rate limits (for example 10 requests a minute, 100 a day on some models). | Per-model rate limits, e.g. 30 requests/min and 1,000 requests/day on gpt-oss-120b | Not stated by vendor | Low per-model rate limits. | console.groq.com/docs/rate-limits checked 2026-10-14 |
| OpenRouter | 25+ free models from 4 free providers via chat and API, with activity logs. | No prompt caching, budgets or management keys on Free | Not stated by vendor | No budgets, spend controls or prompt caching on Free. | openrouter.ai/pricing checked 2026-10-14 |
| Cloudflare Workers AI | 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge. | Daily neuron cap | Not stated by vendor | Requests fail with an error past the daily cap (resets 00:00 UTC); some models need a paid billing method. | developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing checked 2026-10-14 |
| NVIDIA NIM | Free NIM API endpoints for prototyping, plus self-hosting NIM on up to 16 GPUs for development. | Development, testing and research only; production needs an NVIDIA AI Enterprise license | Not stated by vendor | Not for production use; production requires an NVIDIA AI Enterprise license (from $4,500 per GPU per year). | docs.api.nvidia.com/nim/docs/product checked 2026-10-14 |
| Cohere | Free API calls with a Trial API key. | Rate-limited, non-production use | Not stated by vendor | Trial keys are rate limited and may not be used for production or commercial purposes. | cohere.com/pricing checked 2026-10-14 |
| Hugging Face | Hub hosting and Spaces on free CPU Basic (2 vCPU, 16 GB) and ZeroGPU hardware. | Small monthly inference credits | Not stated by vendor | Not stated by vendor | huggingface.co/pricing checked 2026-10-14 |
Every row is taken from the vendor's official pricing page, checked 2026-10-14. "Not stated by vendor" means the page does not say. Plans change, so confirm on the vendor's site.
Pick this if
Google AI StudioYou want free Gemini tokens and accept that free-tier content is used to improve Google products.
GroqYou want fast open models with stated per-model rate limits.
OpenRouterYou want one API for 25+ free models from 4 providers.
Cloudflare Workers AIYou want a fixed daily allowance (10,000 Neurons a day).
NVIDIA NIMYou are prototyping only; production needs a paid NVIDIA AI Enterprise license.
CohereYou are testing; trial keys may not be used for production or commercial purposes.
Hugging FaceYou also want free Spaces hosting; inference credits are small and monthly.
FAQ
Is the Gemini API free?
Google AI Studio offers free input and output tokens for some Gemini models. Free-tier content is used to improve Google products.
How much does Cloudflare Workers AI give for free?
10,000 Neurons per day. Requests fail past the cap until it resets at 00:00 UTC.
Can I use free LLM APIs in production?
Not all. Cohere trial keys and NVIDIA NIM developer access are stated as non-production only.
Is OpenRouter free?
OpenRouter lists 25+ free models from 4 free providers via chat and API, without budgets or prompt caching on Free.