A continuously-verified dataset of free LLM & AI-model APIs you can build on.

Free LLM APIs plus adjacent model APIs — image, speech, embeddings, rerank and OCR. Free tiers, trial credits and no-cost quotas, every entry dated, sourced, and machine-readable. No hype, no dead links, no "generous limits" hand-waving. Just what's actually free, and the fine print that bites.

🔎 Interactive explorer  ·  📊 Dataset  ·  🧪 How we verify  ·  ➕ Add a provider

Most "free LLM API" lists are a snapshot someone took once and never touched again. Rate limits get cut, docs URLs move, "free forever" quietly becomes "free for 30 days" — and the list keeps recommending it, confidently, for another year.

This project treats the list as a maintained open dataset, not a blog post:

• Every entry is dated and sourced. No Last verified date and a link to the provider's own docs? It doesn't ship as verified.
• Freshness is measured, not claimed. The badge above is computed from the data — it grades the oldest re-verification against the 90-day SLA, so it decays the moment maintenance stops. When it decays, you can see it.
• Links are checked, not scheduled. Every change runs the integrity gate, and each re-verification pass opens the provider's own docs — a dead source link is the earliest signal a provider changed something.
• Uncertainty is labelled, not hidden. Entries we couldn't independently confirm are marked ⚠️ and say exactly what's unconfirmed, instead of being dressed up as fact.
• The data is the source of truth. data/providers.json is validated against a schema; this README, the badge and the site are all generated from it, so they can never silently drift apart.

If you're picking an API to prototype on this afternoon, you want the fine print more than the marketing. That's the whole point of this repo.

Primarily free LLM (text) APIs — plus the adjacent model APIs a builder reaches for next: image generation, speech (STT/TTS), embeddings, rerank and OCR. Every category is held to the same verification bar. Breakdown is generated from the data:

Filter any category live in the interactive explorer or the multimodal collection.

Each pick links to its full verified profile on the live site.

Starting points, not guarantees — read the full profile before you build on it.

Focused, always-current collections — each is generated from the dataset and has a live web page too.

• Free LLM APIs with no credit card (57) — start without a payment method · live page ↗
• Free LLM APIs with no phone verification (22) — no SMS/phone verification · live page ↗
• Free LLM APIs for commercial use (25) — safe to ship, not eval-only · live page ↗
• OpenAI-compatible free LLM APIs (36) — drop-in OpenAI SDK swap · live page ↗
• Permanently free LLM APIs (5) — $0 models, no trial clock · live page ↗
• Free multimodal LLM APIs (52) — vision, audio, embeddings · live page ↗

Every provider also has its own page with the full details and a copy-ready quickstart — e.g. Groq, Deepgram, Jina AI.

• What's covered — the categories, by the numbers
• Browse by need — curated collections by constraint
• The best free LLM APIs — our editorial top 20
• Notably NOT free — so this list doesn't waste your time
• How verification works — the trust engine
• Use the data — dataset, exports, badge
• Contributing · Project docs

Our editorial top 20 — hand-picked from the 69 verified providers, ranked for real-world usefulness, not an automatic filter. Every row links to its full verified profile: free tier, rate limits and the catch are checked against the provider's own docs. The full editorial write-up is on the /best page ↗.

_{💳 no card · 📵 no phone · 📱 phone required · 🏢 commercial OK · 🔬 eval only · 🔌 OpenAI-compatible}

That's the shortlist. The full dataset — all 69 providers, every ongoing tier and one-time credit, filterable and machine-readable — lives in data/providers.json and the interactive explorer ↗.

Worth saying plainly. As of the last verification pass, OpenAI, Anthropic and xAI do not offer an ongoing free API tier. Several providers people assume are free — Together AI, DeepInfra, Perplexity's API, Replicate, Featherless AI — currently require a card or prepayment before any API use, per their own docs. Some have handed out small one-time trial credits at various points, but that's changed repeatedly; check each provider's billing page before assuming anything.

For genuinely free access to strong models, your best bets here are Gemini (frontier-class) and the free open-weight models on Groq, OpenRouter, Cloudflare and Z.ai (SiliconFlow's free models are on its China platform and need real-name verification).

Retired or removed after re-verification: GitHub Models (fully retired by GitHub on 2026-07-30 — playground, catalog and inference API shut down for all customers), Cerebras (now listed as a trial credit: the ongoing free tier became a payment-method-gated $5/30-day trial), Inference.net (the free tier is gateway/observability only, not free model tokens), and Hyperbolic (requires a $5 minimum deposit before any use).

Free-tier terms move fast, and most lists go stale silently. This one is built to surface drift instead of hiding it. Full details in docs/methodology.md; the short version:

1. Every verified entry carries a last_verified date and a link to the provider's own docs. No date + primary source → it ships as ⚠️ unverified, not as fact.
2. A local re-verification pass (docs/update-playbook.md) re-checks each provider's own docs on a rolling basis — a dead or changed source is an early warning that a provider changed something.
3. The freshness badge is computed from the data, not written by hand: it is graded on the oldest verification in the list, straight from providers.json. Green while every entry is under 60 days old, amber once any entry is due for re-verification, red once any entry breaches the 90-day SLA. One forgotten row is enough to move it — which is the point.
4. The dataset is schema-validated in CI. A verified entry that's missing its date or source link fails the build — the honesty rule is enforced by machine, not by good intentions.
5. Reporting a stale entry takes under a minute via a structured form that asks for the provider, what changed and a source link.

What "verified" covers and where its limits are: docs/methodology.md · what earns a spot on the list: docs/inclusion-criteria.md.

This is meant to be consumed by machines as much as by humans.

• data/providers.json — canonical dataset, validated against data/schema.json. Every field explained in docs/comparison-dimensions.md.
• Static JSON API — the public JSON dataset and the versioned JSON API are generated from the canonical dataset for programmatic use.

# Every ongoing free tier that needs neither a card nor a phone number:
curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pacocartones/free-llm-api-hub/main/data/providers.json \
  | jq -r '.providers[]
      | select(.category=="ongoing" and .card_required==false and .phone_required==false)
      | .name'

Pin a snapshot for reproducible builds. main moves; depend on an immutable tag instead:

curl -s https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pacocartones/free-llm-api-hub/v2.9.1/data/providers.json

Tags track the dataset version in data/providers.json (see CHANGELOG.md) — pin vX.Y.Z and bump deliberately. The live JSON API always serves the latest main.

Vouch for the data from your own README — embed the live freshness badge:

[![Free LLM API Hub](https://img.shields.io/endpoint?url=https://raw.githubusercontent.com/pacocartones/free-llm-api-hub/main/badge-freshness.json)](https://github.com/pacocartones/free-llm-api-hub)

It renders the real, auditable age of the oldest entry in the list — not a static "as of some date I forgot to update" number, and not a share that only moves after the project has been dead for a season.

Embed a live widget on any site — a compact, always-current list of the top verified free APIs:

<div id="flh-widget" data-count="6" data-modality="text"></div>
<script src="https://freellmapihub.com/widget.js" async></script>

Self-contained (inline styles, no CSS conflicts). data-modality is optional (text, audio, embeddings, image, vision, ocr, rerank).

Follow changes — updates page or the RSS feed.

Found an outdated limit, a dead link, or a provider that belongs here? You'll keep this useful for everyone.

• Fastest: the structured issue form — provider, what changed, a source link.
• Or open a PR editing only data/providers.json. Run npm run build to regenerate the README and badge, and npm test to validate. Never hand-edit the tables — they're generated.

Full guidelines, including what counts as an acceptable source: CONTRIBUTING.md.

This dataset is only as good as it is trustworthy, and right now there are null fields (= "nobody has confirmed it yet") waiting for a source. Three concrete ways to help, from smallest to biggest:

1. Grab a good first issue and confirm a single fact about one provider (e.g. "does Cerebras require a phone?") from its official site, with today's date. It's a one-line diff in data/providers.json.
2. Pick a provider from the umbrella issue confirm phone_required.
3. Do the same for confirm commercial_ok, reading the provider's terms.

The rule is simple and honest: primary source (the provider's own docs) + last_verified with a real date, and if you're not sure, leave it null and say so. Comment on an issue to claim it and a maintainer will assign it to you.

Hacktoberfest: this repository takes part. Merged pull requests are labelled hacktoberfest-accepted. One sourced fact beats ten cosmetic edits; see CONTRIBUTING.md.

Thanks to everyone who has verified an entry, fixed a link, or improved the project:

• Jhansi Oruganti — data: confirm Novita AI free tier is not commercial-use allowed (PR #27)
• Victoria Odalo — docs: verify Clarifai commercial_ok status (PR #112)
• MikeGatsby — data: verify Datalab hosted-API commercial-use terms (no explicit statement found) (PR #117)
• bcabreraike-cmyk — docs: explain paced re-verification batches (PR #169)
• Swarnabha Nandi — fix: show clear button when sort is changed (PR #183)
• Manan Bharti — test: check serializer ORDER against the provider schema (PR #201)
• Piyush — data: verify Datalab phone requirement and free-tier rate limit (PR #198)

MIT — free to reuse, fork, and adapt, including the dataset. A link back is appreciated but not required.