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LLM Providers, ranked by how fast you get a key

Most "free" LLM APIs make you fight a Cloudflare challenge, hand over a credit card, or pass KYC before you get a key. We ranked 188 providers by an Ease score — how fast you actually reach your first API call with just an email. Filter by gate, type, or free-tier rate limits and skip the ones that waste your afternoon.

188providers ranked —LLM / chat capable —no credit card 0–100Ease score
#1
BlockRun
100
8 models unlimited, no throttle
#2
Cerebras
100
quota ~1M tokens/day (≈$15/mo)
#3
Glhf.chat
100
2 models unlimited
#4
Groq
100
quota 30 RPM / 14.4K RPD (≈$15–50/mo)
#5
Hugging Face Inference
100
$0.10/mo routing + serverless
Skip the gate: no-card APIs →
How to read this table. Every provider gets an Ease score (0–100) — how fast you reach your first API call with just an email. 100 means zero friction (sign up, get a key). Lower scores mean a gate stands between you and a working key: Card (billing required), Phone (SMS verify), KYC (real-name auth), Captcha / Cloudflare (bot challenge), OAuth (Google/GitHub only). Free-tier value, rate limits (RPM = requests/min, RPD = requests/day), and context window are pulled from each provider's free plan.

Smaller lists: No credit card · Image, speech & embedding APIs · OpenRouter alternatives

Building a company? See startup programs and credits for $1K–$350K in cloud, AI, and infra credits (AWS, Google, Azure, Anthropic, OpenAI, and more).

All providers, ranked by Ease score

# Provider Type Ease Gates Free tier RPM Context Status
1 BlockRun↗ LLM-Gateway 100 No gate 8 models unlimited, no throttle ∞ 131K–256K active
2 Cerebras LLM 100 No gate quota ~1M tokens/day (≈$15/mo) 5–30 8K (free) active
3 Glhf.chat↗ LLM-Gateway 100 No gate 2 models unlimited ∞ 131K warning
4 Google AI Studio LLM 80 oauthphone quota 15 RPM / 1.5K RPD (≈$20+/mo) 5–30 1M–2M active
5 Groq LLM 100 No gate quota 30 RPM / 14.4K RPD (≈$15–50/mo) 30–60 128K–131K active
6 Hugging Face Inference LLM-Gateway 100 No gate $0.10/mo routing + serverless 300/hr 128K active
7 Lepton AI↗ LLM 100 No gate free tier available — 128K active
8 OpenRouter LLM-Gateway 100 No gate 25+ :free models, 50 RPD → 1K RPD after $10 20 128K–262K active
9 Pollinations AI↗ LLM-Gateway 100 No gate unlimited, no auth — 128K active
10 bazaarlink↗ LLM-Gateway 100 No gate instant key, no auth 10 128K active
11 Deepgram STT/TTS 100 No gate $200 credit — 43K min Nova active
12 AssemblyAI STT 100 No gate $50 credit 5 streams/min 185 hrs active
13 GitHub Models LLM-Gateway 100 No gate 100+ models, generous daily 15 RPM / 150–1K RPD — retired
14 Kilo Code Gateway↗ LLM-Gateway 95 No gate 11 models, no key, per-IP 3.3 (200/hr) 64K–1M active
15 LLM7.io↗ LLM-Gateway 95 No gate 500K/day anon → 1M/day w/ token 10 (anon) / 40–120 (token) 8K–1M active
16 OpenCode Zen↗ LLM-Gateway 95 No gate 12 free models — 1M active
17 ByteDance Volcengine↗ LLM 95 oauth 500K tokens/30d per model 10K (default) / 30K (Seed 2.0) 256K active
18 Aleph Alpha↗ LLM 90 No gate free tier — 128K active
19 Alibaba Model Studio LLM 90 No gate 1M tokens/90d + 70M signup (real-name) 600–30K 128K–1M gated
20 Anyscale↗ LLM 90 No gate free tier — 128K active
21 Baseten LLM 90 No gate $30 implied (unpublished) — 128K trial
22 DeepInfra↗ LLM 90 No gate $5 signup (90d) + $5/mo recurring 30/min 128K active
23 DeepSeek↗ LLM 90 No gate 5M tokens/30d 500–2,500 conc. 1M active
24 Mistral AI LLM 90 No gate ~1B tokens/mo, 500K TPM 60 128K–262K active
25 NVIDIA NIM LLM 90 No gate 40 RPM / 10K RPD, 1K–5K credits 40 (shared) 128K–1M gated
26 OpenAlchemy↗ LLM 90 No gate free tier — 128K active
27 SambaNova LLM 90 No gate free plan 20 RPM / 20 RPD / 200K TPD 20 128K active
28 Z.AI↗ LLM 90 No gate 20M signup, 1 conc. req 1 conc. 200K–1M gated
29 agentrouter↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate email+password, optional verification_code — 128K active
30 Nscale↗ LLM 90 No gate free tier, fair use — 128K active
31 AIML API↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate 200+ models, free tier — 128K active
32 OVHcloud AI Endpoints↗ LLM 90 No gate 2 RPM anon → 400 RPM auth 2 (anon) / 400 (auth) 131K active
33 Puter↗ LLM 90 No gate free in-browser, no signup — — active
34 NaraRouter↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate 5M tokens/day, Google-only 10 256K active
35 Ollama Cloud LLM-Gateway 90 No gate 16 families, session limits session 5h / weekly 7d 128K–1M active
36 Hetzner Inference LLM 90 No gate 3M in / 60K out / 60s, 500M in / 5M out / 24h — 128K beta
37 AnyAPI↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate 100K tokens/day, 400+ models — 128K active
38 OrcaRouter↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate 4 free models + orcarouter/free — 128K active
39 ZeroLimitAI↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate lifetime free tier, model:'auto' — 128K active
40 Inference.net (free) LLM 90 No gate fair use, DeepSeek-R1/Llama 30 128K active
41 Nous Portal↗ LLM 90 No gate $0/mo, Hermes 4 — 128K active
42 Coze (ByteDance)↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate token-based daily, GPT-4o/Gemini — 128K active
43 Featherless AI↗ LLM-Gateway 90 No gate free tier, unlimited via HF — 128K active
44 Aion Labs↗ LLM 85 cloudflare 20K/day → 500 RPM after top-up 15 128K active
45 Dataloop↗ LLM 85 cloudflare free tier — 128K active
46 Jina AI↗ LLM 85 cloudflare free tier — 128K active
47 LightOn↗ LLM 85 cloudflare free tier — 128K active
48 Moonshot AI (Kimi)↗ LLM 85 captcha Tier0 1 conc./3 RPM → Tier5 $3K 3–10K 128K–1M active
49 OpenAI LLM 85 cloudflare $5 trial (inconsistent 2026) — 1M trial
50 SiliconFlow↗ LLM 85 captcha ¥14 (~$1) + Qwen3-8B free 1K (L0) → 10K (L5) 128K gated
51 StepFun↗ LLM 85 captcha ¥10 credit, 5 conc. 10 (V0) → 200K (V5) 256K active
52 You.com↗ LLM 85 cloudflare free tier — 128K active
53 Baidu Qianfan↗ LLM 80 phone ERNIE Speed/Lite uncapped (real-name) — 128K gated
54 Fireworks AI LLM 80 cloudflareoauth $1 starter + startup $5K–100K 10 (no card) → 600 (card) 128K active
55 Hyperbolic LLM 80 captchaoauth free tier — 128K active
56 OctoAI↗ LLM 80 phone free tier — 128K active
57 Replicate↗ LLM 80 cloudflareoauth limited free runs + $10 referral 1/sec → 6/min (no billing) 128K active
58 Together AI LLM 80 cloudflareoauth -Free suffix models free + $1 trial — 128K trial
59 Reka↗ LLM 85 No gate $10/mo recurring, 60 RPM 60 (free) / 120 (pro) 128K active
60 Agnes AI↗ LLM 85 No gate 20 actual RPM (text free) 20 actual / 30 allowed 256K–1M active
61 Chutes.ai LLM 80 No gate community retired → $3/mo base (was 200/day) 131K–1M trial
62 Vercel AI Gateway LLM-Gateway 80 No gate $5/mo free credits, BYOK dynamic 128K active
63 Scaleway LLM 80 No gate 1M tokens trial, card on file — 128K gated
64 IBM watsonx.ai LLM 80 No gate trial, Granite/Llama/Mistral dynamic 128K active
65 Perplexity AI↗ LLM 80 cloudflarecaptcha 50 RPM sonar API 50 128K active
66 Stability AI↗ Image 85 cloudflare 25 credits/mo — — active
67 Ideogram↗ Image 80 cloudflarecaptcha free tier — — active
68 Leonardo AI↗ Image 80 No gate 150 tokens/day — — active
69 DeepAI↗ Image 80 No gate free tier — — active
70 GetImg.ai↗ Image 85 cloudflare free tier — — active
71 Jina Embeddings↗ Embeddings 80 cloudflarecaptchaphone 1M tokens free 500 1M tokens active
72 Voyage AI↗ Embeddings 85 cloudflare 50M tokens free — 50M active
73 Codeium Code 85 cloudflare free tier — 128K active
74 Tabnine↗ Code 80 cloudflarecaptcha free tier — 128K active
75 SeekAPI.ai↗ LLM-Gateway 85 No gate $0.50 credit, 1 RPM (Explorer) 1 (free) / 30 (Growth) 128K active
76 KKAPI↗ LLM-Gateway 85 No gate $0.20 trial, $1 min top-up — 128K active
77 kkiai.com (SynStar AI)↗ LLM-Gateway 85 No gate no free tier, 3–12% bonus on top-up — 128K active
78 Anthropic LLM 70 cloudflarecaptcha ~$5 one-time + startup $1K–100K — 200K trial
79 Cloudflare Workers AI LLM 70 cloudflarecaptcha 10K Neurons/day (shared) 150–3K (task) 24K–131K active
80 ModelScope↗ LLM 70 cloudflarecaptcha 2K RPD total, ≤500/model dynamic 256K gated
81 TextCortex↗ LLM 70 cloudflarecaptcha free tier — 128K active
82 xAI (Grok) LLM 70 cloudflarecaptcha $25 signup + $150/mo w/ data-share — 2M trial
83 LeapMind↗ LLM 75 card card required — 128K gated
84 Novita AI LLM 75 card $0.50 credit (was free) dynamic 128K active
85 Qdrant↗ Embeddings 70 cloudflarecard free tier, card — — gated
86 Pinecone↗ Embeddings 70 No gate free tier (Starter) — — active
87 Weaviate↗ Embeddings 70 cloudflare free tier — — active
88 Milvus↗ Embeddings 70 cloudflare free tier (Zilliz) — — active
89 Supermaven↗ Code 75 card card required — 128K gated
90 Amazon Q↗ Code 70 cardphone free tier (Builder ID) — 128K gated
91 Kilo Code↗ Code 70 card card required — 128K gated
92 Cursor↗ Code 70 cloudflarecaptcha free tier (2K completions) — 128K active
93 Sourcegraph Cody Code 70 cloudflare free tier — 128K active
94 Mixedbread↗ Embeddings 70 No gate free tier (embeddings) — — active
95 ImaginePro↗ Image 70 No gate free tier — — active
96 Playground AI↗ Image 70 No gate free tier — — active
97 NightCafe↗ Image 70 cloudflarecaptcha free credits daily — — active
98 Tensor.art↗ Image 70 cloudflarecaptcha free tier — — active
99 Civitai↗ Image 70 cloudflarecaptcha free tier — — active
100 SeaArt↗ Image 70 cloudflare free tier — — active
101 PixAI↗ Image 70 cloudflareoauthphone free tier — — active
102 Krea AI↗ Image 70 cloudflarecaptcha free tier — — active
103 ModelsLab↗ Image 70 cloudflareoauthcard free tier — — gated
104 Recraft↗ Image 70 No gate free tier — — active
105 Freepik↗ Image 70 No gate free tier — — active
106 Cartesia↗ Speech 70 No gate free tier — — active
107 ElevenLabs Speech 70 No gate free tier (10K chars/mo) — — active
108 Fish Audio↗ Speech 70 cloudflareoauth free tier — — active
109 Resemble AI↗ Speech 70 cloudflarecard free tier, card — — gated
110 Murf AI↗ Speech 70 cloudflarephone free tier — — gated
111 PlayHT↗ Speech 70 No gate free tier — — active
112 Gradium↗ Speech 70 No gate free tier — — active
113 Lovo AI↗ Speech 70 No gate free tier — — active
114 WellSaid Labs↗ Speech 70 cloudflare free tier — — active
115 Speechify↗ Speech 70 cloudflare free tier — — active
116 Inference.net LLM 60 cloudflarecard card required — 128K gated
117 upstage LLM 60 card terms gate isTermAgreed=false — 128K gated
118 friendli↗ LLM 60 No gate probed only — 128K beta
119 cerebrium↗ LLM 60 No gate probed only — 128K beta
120 Nebius Token Factory LLM 60 card $50 ($25+$25 Tavily) — card $0 pre-auth — 128K gated
121 Tencent Hunyuan↗ LLM 60 phonekyc 1M tokens/model, 1 year 20/s mgmt 224K–1M gated
122 iFlytek Spark↗ LLM 60 kyc 2M tokens, Lite free forever 5 128K gated
123 SenseNova↗ LLM 65 No gate 1,500 calls/5h per model, 20 keys, free beta — 256K–1M beta
124 Huawei DevEco Code↗ LLM 60 kyc GLM-5.1 unlimited, 50 RPM 50 202K gated
125 Alibaba Bailian LLM 60 kyc 70M tokens, 90d expiry 600–30K 128K–1M gated
126 Zhipu GLM (z.ai)↗ LLM 60 kyc 20M signup, GLM-4.7-Flash free 1 conc. 200K–1M gated
127 Doubao (Volcengine)↗ LLM 60 kyc 500K/30d per model 10K–30K 256K gated
128 Kimi K3↗ LLM 60 kyc Tier0 1 conc., Tier1+ higher 3 (free) → 10K 1M gated
129 MiniMax M2↗ LLM 10 cloudflarecardphonekyc trial, M2.7 500 RPM 500 205K–1M gated
130 SiliconFlow L0↗ LLM 60 kyc ¥14, Qwen3-8B free 1K → 10K 128K gated
131 LiteLLM↗ LLM-Gateway 65 No gate self-hosted, 100+ LLMs, unlimited ∞ — active
132 Portkey AI↗ LLM-Gateway 65 No gate gateway, community+enterprise — — active
133 9Router↗ LLM-Gateway 65 No gate 40+ providers, 2–4x token compression — — active
134 AIML API↗ LLM-Gateway 65 No gate 200+ models, free tier — — active
135 OmniRoute↗ LLM-Gateway 65 No gate 250+ providers, 90+ free — — active
136 Scaleway Generative LLM 60 card 1M tokens trial, card on file — 128K gated
137 Upstash Vector Embeddings 65 cloudflare free tier (vector) — — active
138 ai21 LLM 50 kyc entitlement gate: email isn't allowed — 256K gated
139 fastrouter↗ LLM-Gateway 30 captchacard captcha + credit gate >$1 balance — 128K gated
140 nemorouter↗ LLM-Gateway 40 card card required (Stripe) — 128K gated
141 DeepSeek 5M↗ LLM 50 No gate 5M/30d, peak 2× off-peak 500–2,500 conc. 1M active
142 Kimi Tier0↗ LLM 50 kyc 1 conc. / 3 RPM / 500K TPM free 3 1M gated
143 SiliconFlow unverified↗ LLM 50 kyc 100 req/day unverified → 10K RPM verified 1K (verified) 128K gated
144 MiniMax trial↗ LLM 50 kyc trial credits, 200–500 RPM 200–500 205K–1M trial
145 Together paid LLM 50 cloudflareoauth $1–25 trial, startup $15K–50K — 128K trial
146 Fireworks $1 LLM 50 cloudflare $1 starter (10 RPM → 600 RPM w/ card) 10 → 600 128K trial
147 Baseten $30 LLM 50 No gate $30 signup + $25K startup — 128K trial
148 Nebius $50 LLM 50 card $50 ($25+$25 Tavily), card $0 pre-auth — 128K gated
149 Modal $30 LLM 50 card $30/mo free plan + startup $5K–25K — — trial
150 Cohere card LLM 40 cloudflareoauthcardkyc 1K calls/mo trial, card at upgrade 20 128K trial
151 xAI data-share LLM 50 No gate $25 + $150/mo w/ data-share, else paid — 2M trial
152 SeekAPI.ai↗ LLM-Gateway 50 No gate $0.50 free (Explorer 1 RPM) 1 (free) → 100+ 128K active
153 KKAPI↗ LLM-Gateway 50 No gate $0.20 trial — 128K active
154 Kkiai↗ LLM-Gateway 50 No gate no free tier (3–12% bonus) — 128K active
155 kktoken.cc↗ LLM-Gateway 50 No gate minimal public info — — gated
156 Anthropic Startup LLM 40 cloudflare $1K base → $100K top via VC — 200K trial
157 Google for Startups LLM 30 card $2K (pre-funded) → $350K (AI tier) — 1M trial
158 AWS Activate LLM 25 cardphone $1K (Founders) → $200K (Portfolio) — 200K trial
159 Microsoft for Startups LLM 30 card $5K (no VC) → $150K (VC) — 128K trial
160 Together Accelerator LLM 40 cloudflare $15K (≤$5M) → $50K (>$10M) — 128K trial
161 Baseten Startup LLM 50 No gate $25K + $2.5K Model APIs — 128K trial
162 Modal Startup LLM 50 card $5K (bootstrapped) → $25K (Seed–A) — — trial
163 RunPod↗ GPU 50 card $1K (Starter) → $25K bonus on $50K commit — — trial
164 Fireworks Ignite LLM 50 No gate $5K–10K (typical) → $100K (L3 >$10M) — 128K trial
165 IBM for Startups LLM 40 No gate $12K (Builder) → $120K (Premium) — 128K trial
166 DigitalOcean Hatch GPU 40 card $10K cap/mo → $100K/12mo — — trial
167 NVIDIA Inception LLM 50 No gate ~$300K ceiling (DGX $100K + AWS $100K + …) — — trial
168 FreeTheAi↗ LLM-Gateway 0 No gate was 80+ models Discord key — — retired
169 NekoAPI↗ LLM-Gateway 75 oauth — — — active
170 Bluesminds↗ LLM-Gateway 50 oauth — (Request access for api.bluesminds LLM API) — — gated
171 TrueSOTA↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth — — — active
172 Aerolink↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth $35 free credits (1-week Starter plan) — — active
173 TrueFoundry↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth Free tier, no credit card required — — active
174 OpenPipe↗ LLM 80 oauth Free fine-tune & inference tier — — active
175 ZenMux↗ Token-Reseller 80 oauth Some free models (e.g. Grok 4.5); pay-as-you-go top-up — — active
176 302.AI↗ Token-Reseller 75 oauth — — — active
177 AIHubMix↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth — — — active
178 Not Diamond↗ Router 70 oauth — (enterprise router; login at code.notdiamond.ai) — — active
179 OhMyGPT↗ Token-Reseller 75 oauth — (pay-as-you-go) — — active
180 PPIO↗ LLM 75 oauth — — — active
181 Dify↗ Agent 80 oauth Free Cloud tier + free self-host (Community Edition) — — active
182 ngrok AI Gateway↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth Free plan (AI Gateway, persistent domain) — — active
183 Helicone↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth 7-day free trial, no credit card — — active
184 Beam Cloud↗ LLM 80 oauth $30 free credit refreshed monthly — — active
185 Abacus.AI↗ LLM-Gateway 75 oauth Free trial (ChatLLM); RouteLLM API to 100s of models — — active
186 OkRouter↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth — — — active
187 Requesty↗ LLM-Gateway 80 oauth Free start, 5% markup on model cost — — active
188 CometAPI↗ Token-Reseller 80 oauth Free API key + test credits, no credit card — — active

The 5 fastest free LLM APIs (no card, no KYC)

You want a working chat or completions call in under two minutes. Five providers score 100 on our Ease scale: email signup, instant key, zero billing. Here they are, with the real free-tier numbers we verified. For the broader landscape, our Best Free AI APIs guide ranks providers by use case, and How to pick a free LLM API walks the tradeoffs.

  • Groq — 30–60 RPM and 14,400 requests/day on LPU hardware. No card. The fastest raw free tier in the table.
  • Google AI Studio — 5–30 RPM / 1,500 requests/day on Gemini, 1M–2M context. Requires a Google account (new accounts need a phone).
  • OpenRouter — one key, 25+ free :free models behind an OpenAI-compatible endpoint. 20 RPM / 50 RPD.
  • Cerebras — ~1M tokens/day (about $15 of inference) on Llama and Qwen. No card.
  • Hugging Face Inference — 100+ open models, $0.10/mo routing, 300 requests/hour serverless.

OpenRouter alternatives: one key, many models

OpenRouter is the popular gateway, but it is not the only one. If it is rate-limited or down, these drop-in replacements give you many models behind a single API key, and several run their own free tiers:

  • OpenRouter — the baseline: 25+ free models, 1K RPD after a $10 top-up.
  • LiteLLM — self-hosted proxy for 100+ LLMs, unlimited, no free-tier cap (you pay the upstream provider).
  • Pollinations — unlimited, no auth, text and image from a URL.
  • OrcaRouter, bazaarlink, 9Router, Portkey AI, OmniRoute — gateways with 40–250 providers and free tiers.

Pick a gateway when you want to swap models without rewiring your code. Pick a direct provider (Groq, Cerebras) when you want one model at maximum speed.

Free image, speech, and embedding APIs

The table is not just LLMs. The same Ease score applies to the rest of the AI stack:

  • Deepgram — $200 credit for speech-to-text.
  • AssemblyAI — $50 credit, 5 concurrent streams.
  • ElevenLabs — 10,000 characters/month on the free plan.
  • Embeddings: Voyage AI (50M tokens), Jina (1M tokens), Pinecone and Weaviate (free vector stores).
  • Images: Recraft, Freepik, Leonardo AI (150 tokens/day), Ideogram all run free tiers.

Rate limits change — how we keep this honest

Free tiers move. A provider bumps its RPM, adds a card gate, or retires a model, and this table goes stale. We re-verify on a weekly pass and mark status as active, gated, trial, beta, or retired. The raw data is published as JSON at /data/llm-providers.json so you can build your own monitor. Always confirm the current limit on the provider's pricing page before you ship a product on a free tier.

Turn free into more: DevCheap deals on these providers

Several providers above also carry a standing DevCheap deal — startup credits, extra tokens, or discounts you will not see signing up cold. Open one before you create an account direct. Browse the full AI & LLM deals category for every curated offer.

These links go to DevCheap deal pages. Where a deal is partner or affiliate, the deal page carries our full disclosure.

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Frequently Asked Questions

DevCheap is editorial. Provider names that link to a DevCheap deal page may be partner/affiliate links, in which case the deal page carries our full disclosure. External "visit" links open the provider's site directly. Ease scores and rate limits reflect our last verification pass and drift over time — always confirm on the provider's site before relying on a free tier in production. Last verified Sep 16, 2026.