How to pick a free LLM API (without wasting a weekend)
Most "free" LLM APIs make you fight a Cloudflare challenge, hand over a credit card, or pass KYC before you get a key. I walked the path from zero to a working chat call across the major providers. Here is the framework I would actually use — built on three numbers, not marketing.
Start with Ease, not the model
The model barely matters at the free tier. What matters is how fast you get a key. I rank providers by Ease: 100 means email signup, instant key, no card. Groq, OpenRouter, Cerebras, and Hugging Face all score 100 — you are sending requests in two minutes. Google AI Studio is close but needs a Google account (phone-verified for new users), so it sits a tier lower. Lower scores mean a gate (card, phone, KYC, or captcha) sits between you and production. Pick Ease 100 unless you have a reason not to.
Count the rate limits like they are money
Free tiers are not equal. Groq gives 14,400 requests/day at low latency. Google AI Studio gives 1,500 requests/day on Gemini with a Google account (no card). Cerebras gives about 1M tokens/day. OpenRouter gives 20 RPM and 50 RPD, rising to 1,000 after a $10 top-up. Cloudflare Workers AI gives 10,000 neurons/day. The RPM column is your real ceiling — a free tier that throttles at 1 request/minute is a demo, not a product. Match the limit to your traffic, not your ambition.
Watch the context window and the gate behind it
A 1M-token context window sounds great until you see the gate. DeepSeek gives 5M tokens/30 days with no phone number. Qwen gives 70M signup tokens but asks for real-name verification. Zhipu GLM, Baidu, and Tencent all offer tokens, but most require KYC, which drops their Ease score. Big context plus a hard gate is a trap for production. If you cannot re-verify the limit on the pricing page in 10 seconds, do not trust it.
Use a gateway until you know what you need
Do not marry a model on day one. OpenRouter puts 25+ free models behind one OpenAI-compatible endpoint and one key. LiteLLM, Portkey, OrcaRouter, and Pollinations do the same, several with their own free tiers. A gateway lets you swap models without rewiring your code. When one provider rate-limits you, you already have a dozen drop-in alternatives wired. Graduate to a direct provider — Groq for speed, Cerebras for throughput — only once the traffic shows your real shape.
The move I would actually make
If I were shipping today: open Google AI Studio for a free Gemini key (Google account needed, 1.5K RPD), add Groq for speed (14.4K RPD), and put OpenRouter in front as the fallback. That is three keys and no credit cards, and you cover chat, speed, and failover. Then pick one provider to go deep on once the traffic shows up. See the LLM Providers directory for the full ranked list with live rate limits.
Want the same providers ranked by how fast you actually get a key — no credit card, no KYC paths flagged? See our LLM Providers directory, which ranks 168 providers by signup friction.
Relevant Deals
Cerebras Inference
AI & LLM1M 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.
Google AI Studio
AI & LLM1.5M free tokens/day on Gemini Flash — no credit card, perfect for prototyping
Google AI Studio provides free access to Gemini Flash models with 1.5 million free tokens per day. No credit card required. Includes access to various Gemini models with generous daily limits. Perfect for development, testing, and prototyping.
Groq
AI & LLMFastest LLM inference at 30 RPM free — no credit card, 240 tok/s on Llama 3
Ultra-fast LLM inference API with free tier supporting 30 requests/min and 14,400 requests/day. No credit card required.
HuggingFace Inference Providers
AI & LLM$0.10/mo free inference credits — token-level pricing on thousands of open models from HuggingFace
HuggingFace's official inference API with $0.10/month in free credits. Access to thousands of open-source models via serverless inference (limited to models under 10GB; some popular larger models also supported).
OpenRouter
AI & LLMFree access to 30+ LLMs via one API — compare GPT-4, Claude, Gemini from a single endpoint
Unified API for 30+ LLMs including free models with 20 requests per minute rate limit.
Together AI
AI & LLM$5 free credits = several million tokens — access 50+ open models including Llama 3.3 70B
Together AI offers $5 in free credits on signup. Access to 50+ open-source models including Llama 3.3 70B, Mixtral 8x7B, and many others. At Together AI's pricing, $5 covers several million tokens. No credit card required for the free credits.