Best Free LLM APIs in 2026
Ten genuinely free LLM APIs worth using this year — with real rate limits, whether they need a credit card, and how to use them all at once. Updated from a live catalog of 28 providers.
"Free" means different things: some providers give a permanent rate-limited tier, some give a recurring monthly credit, and a few advertise "free" but quietly require a card. Here's the honest ranking.
| Provider | Why it makes the list | |
|---|---|---|
| 1. Google AI Studio (Gemini) | Permanent free tier, no card. Gemini 2.5/3 Flash + Gemma. Generous RPD on Flash models; Pro tiers are paid. | details |
| 2. Groq | Fastest inference around. Free developer tier (~30 rpm) for GPT-OSS, Llama, Qwen, plus Whisper STT. No card. | details |
| 3. Cerebras | ~1,000,000 tokens/day free on record-breaking hardware. GPT-OSS 120B and GLM. | details |
| 4. OpenRouter | A pool of :free models. 50 requests/day free, or 1,000/day once you've ever bought $10 of credits. No card to start. | details |
| 5. NVIDIA NIM | Recurring free tier at build.nvidia.com (~40 rpm), no card. DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen, Nemotron, Mistral. | details |
| 6. Cloudflare Workers AI | 10,000 free Neurons/day, no card. Llama, Qwen, Mistral, GLM and image models. | details |
| 7. Mistral | Free 'Experiment' tier covering Large, Medium, Small, Codestral and Devstral. No card. | details |
| 8. Cohere | Free trial key: ~1,000 calls/month across Command A/R, Aya, rerank and embed. No card (dev/eval only). | details |
| 9. Z.ai / Zhipu (GLM) | Free GLM Flash models on an international endpoint (no Chinese phone). GLM-4.5/4.6/4.7 Flash. | details |
| 10. Reka | One of the few with a true recurring monthly credit — $10/month, auto-refreshed. | details |
The smarter move: use them together
No single free tier is enough on its own — limits are low and shift constantly. FreeLLMAPI is an open-source, self-hosted router that puts all of the above behind one OpenAI-compatible key, tracks each provider's quota, and fails over automatically when one is exhausted. That turns ten small free tiers into one dependable endpoint.
FAQ
What is the best free LLM API in 2026?
For raw speed, Groq and Cerebras; for the widest model choice, OpenRouter and NVIDIA NIM; for a permanent no-card tier, Google AI Studio. The catch is each has different limits and they change weekly — which is why aggregating them behind one key is the practical answer.
Which free LLM APIs don't need a credit card?
Google AI Studio, Groq, Cerebras, NVIDIA NIM, Cloudflare Workers AI, Mistral, Cohere, Z.ai, OpenRouter and more all offer no-card free tiers. SambaNova and Vercel AI Gateway currently require a card.
Are free LLM APIs good enough for production?
Free tiers are rate-limited and some restrict commercial use, so they're best for prototyping, side projects and low-volume apps. Routing across several — with failover — pushes effective throughput much higher.