Free tiers worth using.
prices as of · re-ranked daily · 92 qualifying models
A free tier is a limit rather than a price, so none of these rows counts as cheapest anywhere on the site. They are worth knowing anyway, and they are ranked by what the maker charges for the same model, because that is what the free calls save you. 92 models have one, the dearest being Nano Banana at $30.90 per million tokens. The price beside each row is the cheapest we can account for once you outgrow the free tier. Prices are per million tokens, three parts input to one part output, at each provider's standard rate.
Today's pick is Nano Banana at Kilo Gateway, $0.15 in and $1.25 out per million tokens, read on 16 Sept 2026.
- 1
Kilo GatewayNano Banana
free at FastRouter, on their own limits. Google charges $30.90 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $1.70A promotion on Google's models: 50% off on Kilo's gateway, with no end date published.
$1.70/M tokens
- 2
NanoGPTKimi K3
free at SenseNova (China), NVIDIA build and 2 others, on their own limits. Moonshot AI charges $24 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $6.20Routes to a host serving the open weights; precision not disclosed.
$6.20/M tokens
- 3
OpenCode ZenGPT-5.3 Codex Spark
free at Poe, on their own limits. OpenAI charges $19.25 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $19.25The same price OpenAI charges.
$19.25/M tokens
- 4
Nous PortalQwen3.7 Max
free at Alibaba Token Plan and Alibaba Token Plan (China), on their own limits. Alibaba Cloud charges $15 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $8.85Resells OpenRouter's catalog at 0.80× the listed price, funded by a subscription whose credits carry a 10% bonus.
$8.85/M tokens
- 5Kilo Gateway
Gemini 3.5 Flash
free at Kenari, on their own limits. Google charges $13.50 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $6.75A promotion on Google's models: 50% off on Kilo's gateway, with no end date published.
$6.75/M tokens
- 6
Eden AIQwen3.8 Max
free at Alibaba Token Plan, SCNet Token Plan and 1 other, on their own limits. Alibaba Cloud charges $12 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $7.80Alibaba's China-region price list, which is lower than the international one. A region, not a deal.
$7.80/M tokens
- 7
SiliconFlow (China)Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
free at NVIDIA build, on their own limits. Alibaba Cloud charges $12 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $1.75SiliconFlow's China-region catalog, priced in the domestic market.
$1.75/M tokens
- 8Nous Portal
Mistral Medium 3
free at NVIDIA build, on their own limits. Mistral AI charges $12 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $3.20Resells OpenRouter's catalog at 0.80× the listed price, funded by a subscription whose credits carry a 10% bonus.
$3.20/M tokens
- 9
Fireworks AIMixtral 8x22B Instruct
free at NVIDIA build, on their own limits. Mistral AI charges $12 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $4.80Hosts the open weights on its own servers, so the price is its own, not a resale. Precision not disclosed.
$4.80/M tokens
- 10
DeepInfraInkling
free at NVIDIA build, on their own limits. Thinking Machines charges $10.29 per M tokens; paid, it starts at $6.90Hosts the open weights on its own servers, so the price is its own, not a resale. Precision not disclosed.
$6.90/M tokens
Frequently asked
- What is the cheapest of the models with a free tier right now?
- Nano Banana at Kilo Gateway, $0.15 in and $1.25 out per million tokens, read on 16 Sept 2026.
- Which lab shows up most in this ranking?
- Alibaba Cloud trained 3 of the top 10 models here.
- How is this ranked, and how current is it?
- Every row is the cheapest price for that model that we can account for: the maker's own, a price below it with a published reason, or a price at or above it. A price below the maker's own with nothing to explain it is shown on the model's page and ranked nowhere. Prices are read daily from 212 providers' public catalogs and blended three parts input to one part output per million tokens. Last refresh: 16 Sept 2026.