Verified Free LLM APIs: Which Providers Actually Require No Credit Card in 2026?

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Direct answer

7 providers offer genuinely free LLM APIs with no credit card required, verified on 2026-09-26:

Rank	Provider	Model	Free Tier Type	No CC?	Rate Limits	Context
1	Groq	Llama 3.3 70B	Permanent Free	✅	30 RPM, 14,400 RPD, 3M TPM	128K
2	Google AI Studio	Gemini 2.0 Flash	Permanent Free	✅	15 RPM, 10K RPD, 1M TPM	1.0M
3	Cerebras	Llama 3.3 70B	Permanent Free	✅	Not documented	128K
4	Cloudflare Workers AI	Llama 3.3 70B	Free Tier	✅	5 RPM, 10K req/day	128K
5	SambaNova	Llama 3.3 70B	Free Tier	✅	20 RPM, 200 RPD, 200K TPM	128K
6	OpenRouter	Llama 3.3 70B	Free Aggregator	✅	3 RPM, 50 RPD, 100K TPM	128K
7	Hugging Face	Llama 3.3 70B	Community Free	✅	500 RPD	128K

⚠️ Not free-no-CC: Claude 3.5 Sonnet ($3/M in, $15/M out) requires a card. Mistral requires phone verification. NVIDIA NIM requires trial credits.

What "free" actually means

We classify free LLM API access into four categories, based on data/free-offerings.json (verified 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z):

Category	Requirements	Duration	Reliability
Permanent Free	No CC, no phone	Unlimited	High
Free Tier	No CC, maybe phone	Daily/weekly caps	Medium
Trial Credits	Sign-up, auto-charges after	Fixed credits ($100-$1000)	High but time-limited
Free Aggregator	No CC	Shared pool limits	Low-medium

Provider-by-provider analysis

1. Groq — Highest-throughput free tier

Status: VERIFIED Permanent Free, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)

Model	Context	RPM	Daily	TPM	Docs
Llama 3.3 70B	128K	30	14,400	3M	groq.com/docs
Llama 3.1 8B	128K	30	14,400	3M	groq.com/docs
Qwen 2.5 Coder 32B	128K	30	14,400	3M	groq.com/docs
Qwen 2.5 72B	128K	30	14,400	3M	groq.com/docs

Latency: ~45ms/token
Strength: High-throughput free inference, generous 3M tokens/day per model
Catch: Rate limits reset daily; RPM limit for sustained usage
Calculator link: Compare API vs self-hosting costs

2. Google AI Studio — For 1M+ token context

Status: VERIFIED Permanent Free, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)

Model	Context	RPM	Daily	TPM
Gemini 2.0 Flash	1.0M tokens	15	10,000	1,000,000
Gemini 1.5 Flash	1.0M tokens	15	15,000	1,500,000

Latency: ~120ms/token
Strength: 1M+ token context window (rare for free tier)
Catch: Only 2 models available; no reasoning model access
Docs: ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs

3. Cerebras — Fast batch inference

Status: VERIFIED Permanent Free, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)
Note: Rate limits not documented in free offerings data

Model	Context
Llama 3.3 70B	128K
Llama 3.1 8B	128K

Latency: ~250ms/token (Llama 3.3), ~300ms/token (Llama 3.1)
Strength: Wafer-scale chips, highest-throughput free Llama 3.3 access
Catch: Limited rate limit transparency
Docs: docs.cerebras.ai

4. Cloudflare Workers AI — Edge inference

Status: VERIFIED Free Tier, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)

Model	Context	Limits
Llama 3.3 70B	128K	5 RPM, 10,000 req/day
Llama 3.1 8B	128K	5 RPM, 10,000 req/day

Latency: Varies by edge location (~140ms typical)
Strength: Global edge network, pay-as-you-scale model
Catch: Low RPM limits; neuron-based counting (not token-based)
Docs: developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai

5. SambaNova — High RPM

Status: VERIFIED Free Tier, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)

Model	Context	Limits
Llama 3.3 70B	128K	20 RPM, 200 RPD, 200K TPM

Latency: ~55ms/token
Strength: High RPM for batch workloads
Catch: Low daily request count (200)
Docs: docs.sambanova.ai

6. OpenRouter — Aggregator model access

Status: VERIFIED Free Aggregator, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)

Model	Context	Limits
Llama 3.3 70B	128K	3 RPM, 50 RPD, 100K TPM
Qwen 2.5 72B	128K	3 RPM, 50 RPD, 100K TPM
Llama 3.1 8B	128K	3 RPM, 50 RPD, 100K TPM

Strength: Multiple free models, OpenAI-compatible API
Catch: Very tight rate limits; dependent on upstream availability
Docs: openrouter.ai/docs

7. Hugging Face — Community endpoints

Status: VERIFIED Community Free, no credit card required
Verified: 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z (data/free-offerings.json)

Model	Context	Limits
Llama 3.1 8B	128K	1000 RPD
Llama 3.3 70B	128K	500 RPD

Strength: No signup friction; many open models
Catch: No RPM limit documented; community endpoint reliability varies
Docs: huggingface.co/docs

What's NOT truly free (no credit card)

Provider	Model	Cost	Credit Card?	Phone?
Anthropic	Claude 3.5 Sonnet	$3/M in, $15/M out	Required	Required
Mistral AI	Codestral 22B	$0.3/M in, $0.9/M out	No	Required
NVIDIA	Llama 3.3 70B (NIM)	$0.59/M in, $0.79/M out	No (trial credits)	No
GitHub Models	GPT-4o mini	$0.15/M in, $0.6/M out	No (30-day trial)	No
Together AI	Llama 3.3 70B	$0.59/M in, $0.79/M out	Yes	No

Source: All provider data from data/free-offerings.json (verified 2026-09-26T00:00:00Z). API pricing from data/models-registry.json. Claude 3.5 Sonnet API pricing: $3/M input, $15/M output (verified from registry). Claude has freeApi.available: false.

When to use each provider

Use case	Recommendation	Why
High-speed inference (30+ RPM)	Groq	30 RPM, 14,400 requests/day
1M+ token context	Google AI Studio	1M token window
Batch processing	Cerebras	Wafer-scale performance
Edge deployment	Cloudflare Workers AI	Global edge network
Multi-model access	OpenRouter	35+ free models aggregated
No signup needed	Hugging Face	Community endpoints

Calculate your specific token usage cost against API pricing at the Inference Cost Calculator, or browse the full Free LLM API Radar for complete provider details.

Related resources

• Groq Provider Details — API configuration and rate limits
• Google AI Studio Provider — Gemini 2.0 Flash setup guide
• Llama 3.3 70B Model Page — VRAM requirements and GPU compatibility
• Inference Cost Calculator — Token cost comparison vs self-hosting
• Free LLM API Provider Guide — Complete directory of free LLM APIs