Penny-Pincher Provider
A curated list of affordable (or almost free) LLM providers for people who are unwilling to pay premium prices for AI.
Note: Claude is arguably the best AI coding assistant out there — but it's expensive. If you want to try it before committing, you can use my guest pass for 1 week of free Claude Pro (includes Claude Code): https://claude.ai/referral/ZkoAngod1A
Guest passes are limited and available on a first-come, first-served basis. New users only — you'll need to enter payment info to activate, but you can cancel before the trial ends to avoid charges. Learn more.
If you know of other providers, feel free to create a pull request or open an issue here. I will review and add them when possible. Thank you!
If you find this helpful, you can support me by donating or registering with my referral links. Thank you!
Providers with Coding Plans
These providers offer coding plan subscriptions. You can prepay a monthly fee and use their LLM APIs with usage limits.
Z.ai
Offers 3 plans:
- Lite: 3x usage of the Claude Pro plan
- Pro: 5x Lite plan usage
- Max: 4x Pro plan usage
Prices vary based on plan duration (monthly, quarterly, or yearly) and occasional promotional offers, so check the website for current pricing.
Source: https://z.ai/subscribe 1
Homepage: https://docs.z.ai/devpack/overview
My referral:
🚀 You've been invited to join the GLM Coding Plan! Enjoy full support for Claude Code, Cline, and 20+ top coding tools — starting at just $10/month. Subscribe now and grab the limited-time deal! Link： https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=PLKIAYEIPW
MiniMax
Offers a Token Plan — a unified subscription for multimodal AI (text, speech, video, image, music). Pricing is based on API calls, not tokens — very generous!
Plans (monthly):
- Starter: $10/month — 1,500 M2.7 requests per 5-hour rolling window
- Plus: $20/month — more requests + speech, image, music generation
- Max: $50/month — even higher quotas across all models
- Highspeed tiers ($40–$150/month) — dedicated M2.7-highspeed access, up to 30,000 requests per 5-hour window
Includes access to M2.7 language model, Speech 2.8, Image-01, Hailuo video, and Music-2.5. Yearly plans available with ~17% discount.
Source: https://platform.minimax.io/docs/token-plan/intro, https://platform.minimax.io/docs/guides/pricing-token-plan 2
Homepage: https://platform.minimax.io
Kimi Code
A coding-focused perk included with Kimi membership — drops into any dev workflow (terminal, IDE, or Kimi CLI) and is backed by Moonshot's Kimi K-series models, which are sharply priced per token.
Usage quotas are tracked on a rolling 5-hour window and scale with your Kimi membership tier. Since Kimi Code ships as part of Kimi membership rather than a standalone plan, check the membership page for the current tier list and pricing.
Source: https://www.kimi.com/code, https://www.kimi.com/membership/pricing 3
Homepage: https://www.kimi.com/code
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio — Coding Plan
Monthly subscription for AI coding tools — top Qwen/Kimi/GLM/MiniMax models at fixed, predictable pricing.
Pro plan: $50/month
- 6,000 requests per 5-hour sliding window
- 45,000 requests per week (resets Monday 00:00 UTC+8)
- 90,000 requests per month (resets on subscription anniversary)
Models include qwen3.5-plus, qwen3-max, qwen3-coder, kimi-k2.5, glm-5, and MiniMax-M2.5.
Supported tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Cline (VS Code), OpenCode, Qwen Code, Kilo Code, Kilo CLI, OpenClaw, Codex, and more.
Note: the Lite plan stopped accepting new subscriptions on Mar 20, 2026.
Source: https://www.alibabacloud.com/help/en/model-studio/coding-plan 4
Homepage: https://www.alibabacloud.com/product/modelstudio
BytePlus ModelArk — Coding Plan
ByteDance's ModelArk coding subscription — flat monthly fee, works with mainstream coding tools, models swappable per task.
Standard plans:
- Lite: $5/month
- Pro: $25/month
Models include latest ByteDance-Seed-2.0-pro/lite, DeepSeek-V3.2, GLM-4.7, Kimi-K2.5, and GPT-OSS variants.
Supported tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Cline (VS Code), Kilo Code, Roo Code, OpenCode, TRAE, and more.
Note: new-user first-purchase promo pricing was suspended on Mar 17, 2026 — everyone now pays the list price.
Source: https://www.byteplus.com/en/activity/codingplan, https://docs.byteplus.com/en/docs/ModelArk/1925114 5
Homepage: https://console.byteplus.com/ark
opencode — Go
A subscription tier for the open-source opencode CLI that pools access to ~10 open-source coding models behind one flat price — aimed at developers who want generous request limits without premium-provider fees.
Pricing:
- $5 first month, $10/month thereafter
- Top up extra credit as needed; cancel anytime
Models include GLM-5.1, GLM-5, Kimi K2.6 (3× quotas through Apr 27), Kimi K2.5, MiMo-V2-Pro/Omni, Qwen3.5/3.6 Plus, MiniMax M2.5/M2.7.
Per-5-hour request limits vary by model tier (≈200 to 10,200).
Source: https://opencode.ai/go 6
Homepage: https://opencode.ai
Synthetic
Run open-source AI models for you in private, secure datacenters.
Privacy-first inference: Synthetic never trains on your data and doesn't store API prompts or completions.
Pricing:
- Subscription: $30/month (app-based access)
- Usage-based: pay-as-you-go, no charge for unused capacity
Models include Kimi K2.5, MiniMax M2.5, GLM 5.1, GLM 4.7 Flash, plus any vLLM-compatible open-source LLM.
OpenAI-compatible — works with Roo, Cline, Octofriend, and any other OpenAI-API-compatible client.
Source: https://synthetic.new/ 7
Homepage: https://synthetic.new
Free Providers
OpenRouter
Free usage limits: If you’re using a free model variant (with an ID ending in :free), you can make up to 20 requests per minute. The following per-day limits apply:
- If you have purchased less than 10 credits, you’re limited to 50 :free model requests per day.
- If you purchase at least 10 credits, your daily limit is increased to 1000 :free model requests per day.
Source: https://openrouter.ai/docs/api/reference/limits 8
Homepage: https://openrouter.ai
Kilo Code — Gateway
Open-source agentic coding extension for VS Code, JetBrains, and CLI. Its built-in Kilo Gateway routes LLM requests to any provider and ships with a genuine free path — no subscription required.
Free access:
- Free models (IDs ending in
:free) cost nothing — usage is tracked but not billed, rate-limited to 200 requests/hour per IP kilo-auto/freeauto-routes among available free models (e.g. GLM 4.7, MiniMax M2.1)- Signup grants $5 in free credits (one-time) usable on paid models
- Bring-your-own-keys works for any provider — no Kilo subscription required
Paid Kilo Pass tiers are available for higher throughput on premium models (Starter $19, Pro $49, Expert $199/month), but the free path covers most casual coding use.
Source: https://kilo.ai/pricing, https://kilo.ai/docs/getting-started/using-kilo-for-free, https://kilo.ai/docs/gateway/usage-and-billing 9
Homepage: https://kilo.ai