OpenRouter Free Tier
OpenRouter offers a curated selection of free models with no credit card required. Free models are subsidized by OpenRouter and community providers.
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Free Tier Details
Free Models20+ models available at $0
Rate Limit (Free)20 requests/min, 200 requests/day
Rate Limit (With Credits)1,000 requests/day after purchasing 10+ credits
Credit Card RequiredNo
Free model IDs end with `:free`. Popular free models include DeepSeek V3, DeepSeek R1, Llama, and Qwen variants. Some less popular models may be rotated out of the free tier over time.
Free Models on OpenRouter (3)
| Model | Context | Capabilities | Price |
|---|---|---|---|
| openrouter-free | — | Free | |
| Qwen3 VL 235B A22B Thinking | 131K | VisionToolsReasoning | Free |
| Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Thinking | 131K | VisionToolsReasoning | Free |
Cheapest Paid Models on OpenRouter
When you need more than the free tier, these are the most affordable options.
| Model | Context | Input / 1M | Output / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| openrouter-auto | — | $-1000000.0000 | $-1000000.0000 |
| openrouter-bodybuilder | — | $-1000000.0000 | $-1000000.0000 |
| LiquidAI/LFM2-8B-A1B | 33K | $0.010 | $0.020 |
| LiquidAI/LFM2-2.6B | 33K | $0.010 | $0.020 |
| Granite 4.0 Micro | 131K | $0.017 | $0.110 |
| Mistral Nemo | 131K | $0.020 | $0.040 |
| meta-llama-llama-guard-3-8b | — | $0.020 | $0.060 |
| Llama 3.1 8B Instruct | 16K | $0.020 | $0.050 |
| Gemma 3n 4B | 33K | $0.020 | $0.040 |
| Llama 3.2 1B Instruct | 60K | $0.027 | $0.200 |
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