Free AI API comparison — every provider's free tier, side by side

Every major AI provider offers a free tier. But they're not created equal. Some expire. Some require a credit card. Some train on your data. Some throttle to unusable levels after the first burst. This page compares every free API tier side by side so you can pick the right one for your use case.

Free tier comparison table

Here is every major AI provider's free tier as of July 2026. Rows are sorted alphabetically. All data verified within the last 30 days.

Provider	Free amount	Reset	Models	RPM/RPD	Card?	Expiry	Train?	OAI comp.
Anthropic	$5 credit	One-time	Claude 3.5 Sonnet, Haiku	—	✅	90 days	No	—
DeepSeek	500K tokens	One-time	DeepSeek-V2, DeepSeek-Coder	—	No	None	No	✅
Google Gemini	60 req/min	Rolling	Gemini 1.5 Pro, Flash, Nano	60/min	No	None	Yes*	—
Groq	30 req/min	Rolling	Llama 3, Mixtral, Gemma	30/min	No	None	No	✅
OpenAI	$5 credit	One-time	GPT-4o mini, GPT-4o	—	✅	90 days	Yes*	Native
Plugsky	100K tokens/day	Daily	30+ models incl. micro, lite, vision	10/min	No	None	No	✅
Together AI	25K tokens/mo	Monthly	Llama, Mixtral, DeepSeek	—	No	None	No	✅
xAI / Grok	$5 credit	One-time	Grok-2, Grok-2 mini	—	✅	30 days	Yes*	—

* Provider reserves the right to use API data for training unless you opt out. Last updated July 2026. Data subject to change — verify on provider's website.

Best free AI API for developers

When evaluating free tiers, most developers care about five factors. Here's how the providers rank:

Factor	OpenAI	Anthropic	Google	DeepSeek	Groq	Plugsky
No credit card	✗	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
No expiry	✗	✗	✓	✓	✓	✓
Data not used for training	Opt out	Opt out	Opt out	✓	✓	✓
OpenAI-compatible format	✓	✗	✗	✓	✓	✓
Generous daily/reset limit	One-time	One-time	60/min	500K tokens	30/min	100K/day

Plugsky wins on the combination of no card, no expiry, daily reset, OpenAI-compatible, and data privacy. Google Gemini gives you generous rate limits but you give up data privacy and OpenAI compatibility. DeepSeek gives you a large one-time pool but no daily reset.

Plugsky free tier

Plugsky's free tier is designed for developers who want to build without friction. Here's exactly what you get:

• 100,000 tokens per day — across 30+ models. That's roughly 70K words of input + output daily, resetting every 24 hours.
• 10 requests per minute — sufficient for testing, prototyping, and light production use.
• 30+ models — including plugsky-micro (fast reasoning), plugsky-lite (general chat), plugsky-vision (image understanding), and more.
• No credit card required — sign up with email or Google. Start building immediately.
• No expiry — your daily quota never expires. Come back in a year and it's still there.
• OpenAI-compatible — use any OpenAI SDK. Change base_url to https://api.plugsky.com/v1 and your code runs.
• Data NOT used for training — your prompts and responses stay private. No opt-out needed.

Best for: developers testing new AI features, building prototypes, evaluating models for a specific task, and running proof-of-concept projects before committing to a paid plan.

Free tier use cases

Different free tiers serve different needs. Here's our recommended match:

Use case	Best provider	Why
Development / testing	Plugsky	No card, no expiry, daily reset. Perfect for CI/CD, staging, and dev environments.
Research / evaluation	Google AI Studio	60 req/min with Gemini Pro. Best for large-scale model evaluation and benchmarking.
Production trial	OpenAI	$5 credit gives you real GPT-4o access. When it runs out, you're already set up to pay.
Local experimentation	Ollama	Completely free, runs on your hardware. No API needed. Best for offline experimentation.

AI API pricing trends

AI API prices have dropped roughly 10x in 18 months. GPT-4 class output was ~$60/MTok in early 2025; by mid 2026 it's under $5/MTok from multiple providers. Open-source models like Llama 4 and Qwen 3 now match or beat proprietary models on many benchmarks.

This trend makes the wait vs. buy decision real: if your project can wait 6 months, it will cost half as much. But if you need to ship now, free tiers reduce the risk to zero — you start building before you spend anything.

Key trends to watch:

• Commoditization of small models — 3B-8B parameter models now outperform GPT-3.5 on many tasks. Free tiers are increasingly viable for real workloads.
• Inference optimization — speculative decoding, KV caching, and quantization cut costs by 2-4x per generation.
• Flat-rate pricing — per-token metering is being replaced by flat monthly tiers (like Plugsky, OpenRouter Pro, and GitHub Copilot).
• Free tier as loss leader — providers use free tiers to capture developer mindshare. The best time to try AI APIs is now.

Frequently asked questions

Which free AI API is best for developers?

Plugsky offers the best balance for developers: 100K tokens/day across 30+ models, no credit card required, no expiry, OpenAI-compatible format, and data NOT used for training. It's the only free tier that checks all boxes.

Do I need a credit card for Plugsky free tier?

No. Plugsky's free tier requires no credit card. Sign up with your email or Google account and start building immediately. The free tier is genuinely free — no trial, no billing info.

How does Plugsky free tier compare to OpenAI?

OpenAI gives you $5 in free credits that expire after 3 months and requires a credit card upfront. Plugsky gives you 100K tokens per day that never expire, no card required, and your data is never used for training. Over a week, Plugsky's daily reset gives you 700K tokens vs. OpenAI's one-time $5.

Can I use free tiers for commercial projects?

Most free tiers allow commercial use but enforce strict rate limits. Check each provider's terms of service. Plugsky's free tier explicitly allows commercial prototyping and testing. For production commercial use, consider a paid plan for higher rate limits.

Which free tier gives the most tokens?

DeepSeek gives 500K tokens as a one-time grant — the largest single pool. Plugsky gives 100K tokens per day (3M/month), which exceeds DeepSeek's total within a week of regular use. Google Gemini gives unlimited tokens but with a 60 req/min rate limit.

Does Plugsky use my data for training?

No. Plugsky does not use any customer data for model training. Your prompts, responses, and API usage stay completely private. No opt-out checkbox needed — it's the default policy.