Free tier
A free tier is an ongoing, no-cost allowance that lets you use an API or service within set usage limits (such as requests per minute or per day) without paying and often without a credit card.
A free tier is a permanent, recurring allowance — unlike a one-off trial credit, it does not expire after a fixed window. Providers use free tiers so developers can evaluate and build small projects before paying.
Free tiers are usually bounded by rate limits (for example requests per minute, requests per day, or tokens per minute) and sometimes by a smaller model selection. Many LLM free tiers, such as the Google AI Studio Gemini free tier or the Groq free tier, require no credit card to start.
When a free tier is enough for your project, you can run real workloads indefinitely at no cost — as long as you stay within the published limits and the provider’s terms of service.
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