10 KiB
Penny-Pincher Provider
Curated list of affordable and free LLM API providers — Claude Code guest passes, coding-plan subscriptions, and free-tier APIs. Maintained for developers who want capable models without premium pricing.
Contributions welcome — open a pull request or issue to add or update an entry.
Claude Code Guest Passes
One week of free Claude Pro (includes Claude Code). New users only; requires payment info but can be cancelled before the trial ends.
My passes:
https://claude.ai/referral/ZkoAngod1A— out of stock as of 2026-04-30
Friend's passes:
Have a spare pass? Open a PR adding your link under Friend's passes, or open an issue.
Providers with Coding Plans
Monthly subscriptions with request-based (not token-based) quotas, compatible with Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, and similar tools.
Z.ai
Plans from $18/month (Lite/Pro/Max). OpenAI-compatible + Anthropic-compatible endpoint. Models: GLM-5.1, GLM-5-Turbo.
Referral: https://z.ai/subscribe?ic=PLKIAYEIPW
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
BigModel.cn — GLM Coding Plan
The Chinese (mainland) counterpart of Z.ai's GLM Coding Plan — same underlying Zhipu AI models, but billed in CNY through bigmodel.cn. Suited for users who can pay via Alipay / WeChat Pay or already have a 智谱 AI account.
Plans (monthly, after the 2026 price adjustment):
- Lite: ¥49/month
- Pro: ¥149/month
- Max: ¥469/month
All tiers support GLM-5.1, GLM-5-Turbo, GLM-4.7, and GLM-4.5-Air. Compatible with Claude Code, Cline, and 20+ coding tools via OpenAI-compatible API plus an Anthropic-compatible endpoint.
Referral program (challenge-based, resets every 30 invitees):
- Invited friend gets 5% off their first GLM Coding Plan order.
- Referrer gets 10% cashback once 3 friends subscribe, plus an additional 10% of the total paid amount for every 30 invitees.
- Rebate credit is usable for resource packs, API calls, and subscription renewals on the BigModel platform.
Source: https://www.bigmodel.cn/glm-coding, https://docs.bigmodel.cn/cn/coding-plan/overview 1
Homepage: https://www.bigmodel.cn/glm-coding
My referral:
🚀 Join the GLM Coding Plan via my link — get 5% off your first order. Subscribe at https://www.bigmodel.cn/glm-coding?ic=VGRZKHKNKW (invitation code:
VGRZKHKNKW).
MiniMax
Token Plan — priced per API call, not token. $10–$150/month.
- Starter ($10): 1,500 M2.7 requests per 5-hour window
- Plus ($20): 4,500 requests + speech/image/music generation
- Max ($50): higher quotas across all models
Models: M2.7 (language), Speech 2.8, Image-01, Hailuo video, Music-2.5. Yearly plans ~17% off.
Referral (10% off): https://platform.minimax.io/subscribe/token-plan?code=CAQ5sxHAq6&source=link
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Kimi Code
Moonshot's coding perk bundled with Kimi membership. Models: Kimi K-series. Rolling 5-hour quota window.
Tiers: Adagio (free), Andante, Presto. Pay-as-you-go also at platform.moonshot.ai.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Alibaba Cloud Model Studio — Coding Plan
Pro plan: $50/month — 6,000 req/5-hour, 45,000 req/week, 90,000 req/month.
Models: qwen3.5-plus, qwen3-max, qwen3-coder, kimi-k2.5, glm-5, MiniMax-M2.5. Tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Codex, and more. Lite plan no longer accepting new subscribers.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
BytePlus ModelArk — Coding Plan
ByteDance. Lite: $5/month, Pro: $25/month.
Models: ByteDance-Seed-2.0, DeepSeek-V3.2, GLM-5.1, Kimi-K2.5. Tools: Claude Code, Cursor, Cline, Roo Code, OpenCode.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
opencode — Go
Open-source opencode CLI subscription. $5 first month, $10/month thereafter.
Models: GLM-5.1, Kimi K2.6, MiniMax M2.7, Qwen3.5/3.6 Plus, MiMo-V2. Per-5-hour limits vary (200–10,200 req).
API key portable — works with Claude Code via LiteLLM proxy or oc-go-cc. Model format: opencode-go/<model-id>.
My referral:
Invite friends to OpenCode Go. Earn $5 when a friend subscribes, and they'll get $5 too. Share your referral link; your friend joins and subscribes to Go; you both get a $5 usage credit to apply toward your Go usage limits.
Referral link: https://opencode.ai/go?ref=HE42WGS8BM
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Synthetic
Privacy-first inference (no training on prompts/responses). $30/month subscription or pay-as-you-go.
Models: Kimi K2.5, MiniMax M2.5, GLM 5.1, GLM 4.7 Flash, vLLM-compatible open-source models. OpenAI-compatible — works with Roo, Cline, Octofriend.
Checked Apr 22, 2026.
Free Providers
Sorted by attractiveness — largest recurring free quota first.
LongCat AI
Meituan. Public beta, no paid tier yet. Resets daily 00:00 Beijing Time.
| Model | Free quota |
|---|---|
LongCat-Flash-Lite |
50M tokens/day |
LongCat-Flash-Chat |
500K tokens/day |
LongCat-Flash-Thinking |
500K tokens/day |
LongCat-Flash-Omni-2603 (multimodal) |
500K tokens/day |
LongCat-2.0-Preview |
10M tokens/2h (invite-only) |
OpenAI + Anthropic compatible endpoints. 256K context on most models.
Checked Apr 28, 2026.
Mistral La Plateforme
Free Experiment plan — up to ~1B tokens/month, no credit card (phone verification only).
Models: Mistral Large 3, Medium 3, Small 3.1, Codestral, Pixtral, embeddings. OpenAI-compatible.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Cerebras Cloud
Wafer-scale chip inference. Free tier, no credit card.
| Model | RPM | TPD |
|---|---|---|
gpt-oss-120b |
30 | — |
llama3.1-8b-instant |
30 | 500K |
qwen-3-235b-a22b-instruct-2507 |
30 | — |
zai-glm-4.7 |
10 | — |
1M tokens/day shared cap.
Checked Apr 28, 2026.
xAI Grok API
$25 signup credits + $150/month via Data Sharing Program (eligible countries).
Models: Grok 4, Grok 4.1 Fast (2M ctx), Grok Code Fast. OpenAI + Anthropic compatible.
Warning: Data Sharing opt-in is irreversible and lets xAI train on your prompts.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
OpenRouter
Free models (:free suffix): 20 RPM, 50 req/day (free accounts); 1,000 req/day after $10 top-up.
Checked Mar 25, 2026.
Groq
LPU inference. Free tier, no credit card.
| Model | RPM | RPD | TPM | TPD |
|---|---|---|---|---|
llama-3.1-8b-instant |
30 | 14,400 | 6K | 500K |
llama-3.3-70b-versatile |
30 | 1,000 | 12K | 100K |
whisper-large-v3 |
20 | 2,000 | — | — |
Checked Apr 28, 2026.
GitHub Models
Free for all GitHub accounts. OpenAI-compatible at https://models.github.ai/inference.
Covers OpenAI, Anthropic, Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek, Grok, Phi. Rate limits vary per model
(e.g. GPT-4o: 10 RPM/50 RPD; DeepSeek-R1: 15 RPM/150 RPD). Requires PAT with models:read.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
NVIDIA NIM
Free for NVIDIA Developer Program members, no credit card. ~40 RPM, ~1,000 req/month.
Models: Kimi K2.5, GPT-OSS, DeepSeek-V3.2, Llama 3.x, Mistral, Phi, Nemotron. OpenAI-compatible.
Checked Apr 25, 2026.
Cloudflare Workers AI
10,000 Neurons/day (resets 00:00 UTC). ~150 LLM responses/day on Llama 3.3 70B.
Models: Llama 3.3 70B, Gemma 3, Qwen2.5-Coder, DeepSeek R1, BGE embeddings, Whisper.
Checked Apr 28, 2026.
Hugging Face Inference Providers
Routes across Together, Fireworks, Novita, Cerebras, Replicate, DeepInfra, Scaleway.
Free: 100K monthly credits. PRO ($9/month): 2M credits. OpenAI-compatible at https://router.huggingface.co/v1.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Google Cloud Vertex AI
$300 free credits for 90 days (new GCP customers). Not a recurring free tier.
Models: Gemini 3 Pro/Flash, Anthropic Claude on Vertex, DeepSeek, GLM, Qwen via MaaS. Express Mode available without billing for limited evaluation quotas.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
DeepSeek Platform
5M free tokens at signup (no code needed). OpenAI + Anthropic compatible.
PAYG: V4 Flash $0.14/M in, $0.28/M out; V4 Pro $0.435/M in, $0.87/M out (cached: $0.03/M).
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Scaleway Generative APIs
EU/GDPR, Paris. 1M free tokens for new customers (no time limit advertised).
Models: Qwen3 (235B/397B/coder), Llama 3.3 70B, Mistral Small 3.2, DeepSeek R1 distill, Pixtral.
Checked Apr 28, 2026.
Kilo Code — Gateway
VS Code + JetBrains coding extension with built-in gateway.
Free: :free models, 200 req/hour per IP. First top-up: $20 bonus credits (60-day expiry).
BYOK supported — no Kilo subscription required for your own provider keys.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Pollinations AI
Open-source, Berlin. Text, image, audio, video. Free publishable key (1 pollen/IP/hour).
Models: DeepSeek V4, Flux, GPT Image, Seedream, Whisper, ElevenLabs voices. OpenAI-compatible.
Checked Apr 28, 2026.
Together AI
$25 signup credits (one-time). 200+ models. OpenAI-compatible — swap base URL.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
DeepInfra
Sign-up credits (one-time). 100+ models from $0.02/M. OpenAI-compatible.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Fireworks AI
$1 starter credits. 50+ models. Function calling, MCP support. OpenAI-compatible.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
Modal Labs — Self-Host
$30/month recurring free credits (Starter plan). Deploy any open-source LLM via vLLM as your own OpenAI-compatible endpoint. 3 seats, 100 containers, 10 concurrent GPUs.
Checked Apr 30, 2026.
License
Apache 2.0
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Checked on May 14, 2026 ↩︎