Free LLM credits come in two flavours: ongoing free tiers (use them forever within limits, usually no card) and one-off trial credits (a fixed balance, often larger, usually needing a card). The best choice depends on whether you want zero friction or a bigger budget to burn.
Every offer below is verified against the provider’s official source and carries a last-verified date on its page. Always confirm current terms with the provider before relying on an offer.
Best no-credit-card free tiers
- Google AI Studio (Gemini) free tier — the strongest all-rounder. Capable Gemini and Gemma models, no card, available in every supported region. Per-model rate limits apply.
- Groq free tier — when you want speed. Very fast inference on open models like Llama, no card to start.
- OpenRouter free models — the widest selection. 50 free-model requests/day with no purchase (1,000/day after a one-time $10 top-up), one API for many models.
- Cohere trial API keys — best for embeddings and reranking. Free evaluation keys with up to 1,000 calls/month, no card.
- Hugging Face Inference credits — a small monthly credit ($0.10 free, $2 on PRO) across many routed providers.
See the full list on the free AI API tiers and free LLM routers pages.
Biggest one-off cloud credits
When a free tier isn’t enough, cloud trials give you a real budget — all usable on hosted models, all requiring a payment method:
- Google Cloud — $300 / 90 days — the most generous, covering Vertex AI and the Gemini API.
- AWS — up to $200 / 6 months — $100 on signup plus up to $100 more, spendable on Amazon Bedrock.
- Azure — $200 / 30 days — plus a year of limited free services, works with Azure OpenAI.
Browse them all on the cloud AI credits page.
How to choose
- Just experimenting? Use a no-card free tier — Google AI Studio or Groq.
- Need many models? OpenRouter free models or Hugging Face.
- Building something bigger? Take a cloud trial credit for a larger budget, then drop back to a free tier for ongoing use.
Whatever you pick, stay within each provider’s terms of service — combining distinct free tiers is fine, but fake eligibility or abuse is not.