Modal Alternatives

$10 free Jamba API credits for 3 months — test 256K-context models at no cost

Jamba family LLM API (Jamba Large 398B, Jamba Mini 52B, Jamba 3B) all with 256K context window. $10 free credits valid for 3 months. No permanent free tier — credit card required after trial.

1M free tokens per model on Qwen — test Alibaba's latest LLMs including Qwen 3.5/3.6

Alibaba Cloud's Model Studio offering 1 million free tokens per model. Access to Qwen family models including Qwen 3.5 and Qwen 3.6. International account and credit card required.

$25K Claude API credits — open to all early-stage startups, priority rate limits included

Anthropic Startup Program offers up to $25,000 in Claude API credits for early-stage startups. Open to any startup with or without VC backing. Provides priority rate limits, community access, and resources. VC-backed companies or accelerator alumni may qualify for additional benefits.

Up to 1B free tokens on Arcee AI — domain-adapted LLMs and model merging for specialized AI apps

Arcee AI's Trinity Builders program offers up to 1 billion free tokens for qualifying developers and startups. Access to Arcee's domain-adapted LLMs and model merging technology. Build specialized AI applications using distilled and merged open-source models. Application required.

$50 free speech-to-text credits — transcribe ~185 hours of audio for free

Speech-to-text API with high accuracy, speaker diarization, and content moderation. $50 free credits on signup.

Test Claude via AWS Bedrock using $200 free credits — no Anthropic account needed, works with onboarding tasks

AWS Bedrock provides free access to Claude models using AWS's $200 free credits for new users. The credits work across 200+ AWS services including Bedrock. One of the onboarding tasks specifically involves running a model in the Bedrock playground, making it easy to test Claude without an Anthropic account.

$30 free GPU credits for model deployment — test custom LLM inference on A100s/H100s

GPU model deployment platform. $30 one-time free credits for deploying custom models or using the Model Library. Pay-per-minute GPU billing (T4: $0.63/hr, A100: $4.00/hr, H100: $6.50/hr). Credit card required after credits are exhausted.

$30/mo free GPU credits (with CC) — open-source, fast cold starts, wide GPU selection

Open-source serverless GPU platform. $30/month free credits (requires credit card; $1 without). Supports T4, A10G, A100, H100, RTX 4090. Sub-second cold starts, Python SDK.

1M free tokens/day at 2,100 tok/s — fastest LLM inference available on cutting-edge hardware

Cerebras provides ultra-fast LLM inference using Wafer-Scale Engine hardware. Free tier includes 1 million tokens per day at 2,100 tokens/second speed. Access to cutting-edge models optimized for Cerebras hardware. No credit card required.

Free TEE-secured inference for 100+ open LLMs — no subscription, pay-per-token, GPU from $1.80/hr for private deploys

Open-source decentralized serverless AI compute. Free TEE (Trusted Execution Environment) inference for 100+ open models including Kimi K2.6, DeepSeek V4 Flash, Qwen 3.8, and GLM 5.1. Pay-per-token with no subscription required. Plus plan $10/mo with 6% off PAYG rates.