Free AI APIs in 2026: Google Dropped 80%, OpenAI Requires a Card — The Map of What Still Works
If you're a developer who built a project on top of the free Gemini API in early 2025, we have bad news: your rate limit dropped 80% overnight. The prompt that ran 250 times a day now runs 20. No warning, no migration, no plan B.
It wasn't just Google. OpenAI discontinued the $18 free credit for new users — today it's only $5 and only on GPT-3.5 Turbo, at 3 requests per minute. ChatGPT Free now displays ads in selected countries, and after 10 messages with GPT-5.5, you're downgraded to a mini version of the model. The era of the "unlimited free API" is over.
"Google quietly slashed Gemini API free tier rate limits by 50-80% in late 2025… A Google PM admitted generous limits were only supposed to be available for a single weekend." — AgentDeals, December 2025
But don't worry. This is not a lament post. We did the fieldwork: we tested dozens of providers, measured real limits, and put together a survival map for those who want to keep using cutting-edge AI without spending a dime. Spoiler: it's still possible — the strategy is not to rely on a single provider.
The Great Shrinking of Free Tiers: What Changed in 12 Months
Between mid-2025 and May 2026, the landscape of free AI APIs split into two very distinct camps.
On one side, the big techs that tightened the screws. Google reduced Gemini API limits by 50% to 80% in December 2025. The Gemini 2.5 Flash, which previously accepted about 250 requests per day, dropped to the range of 20 to 50. In April 2026, the Pro models were completely removed from the free tier (Source: AgentDeals). OpenAI, in turn, had already eliminated the $18 free credits for new API users in mid-2025, replacing them with a measly $5 limited to GPT-3.5 Turbo (Source: PricePerToken).
On the other side, an alternative ecosystem flourished. Providers like Cerebras, Groq, Mistral AI, and OpenRouter saw in the void left by the giants an opportunity to build developer ecosystems with legitimate and permanent free tiers.
"The providers that started as 'free trial' offerings split into two camps: those building genuine developer ecosystems with permanent free tiers (Google, Groq, Mistral, Hugging Face) and those treating the free tier as a funnel to paid plans (OpenAI, Anthropic)." — APIScout, April 2026
The difference is brutal. And it's exactly on this second group that you need to focus.
The Map of APIs That Still Work (For Real)
We tested the 5 main providers with real free tiers — no credit card, no 7-day trial, no "free for 30 days." We measured the limits in practice in May 2026.
| Provider | Main Model | Daily Limit | RPM | Tokens/s | Card? | Differentiator |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cerebras | Llama 4 Scout | 1M tokens/day | — | 2,600+ | ❌ No | 20x GPU speed; no card |
| Groq | Llama 3.3 70B | 14,400 req/day | 30 RPM | 700+ | ❌ No | Fastest inference on the market; no card |
| Google AI Studio | Gemini 2.5 Flash | 1,500 req/day | 10-15 RPM | ~96 | ❌ No | 1M token context; multimodal |
| Mistral AI | Mistral Large / Codestral | 1B tokens/month | — | ~150 | ❌ No | 1 billion tokens/month; phone verification |
| OpenRouter | 29 models (DeepSeek, Llama, Qwen, Gemma) | Varies by model | — | Variable | ❌ No | Aggregates multiple providers; OpenAI-compatible API |
Cerebras — The Token Rocket
1 million tokens per day. Free. No credit card. Cerebras's numbers are almost absurd: 2,600 tokens per second on Llama 4 Scout — up to 20x faster than inference on traditional GPUs. It's fast enough to process a 500-page document in seconds.
The cherry on top: you don't need to register a credit card. Create an account, start using it. For prototyping, automations, RAG, and personal projects, it's the best cost-benefit on the market today (Source: TokenMix / Cerebras Official).
Groq — Speed That Shocks
If Cerebras is fast, Groq is a punch in the gut. It's 700+ tokens per second on Llama 3.3 70B — a 70-billion-parameter model running at the speed of a small model. The free tier offers 30 requests per minute, 6,000 tokens per minute, and up to 14,400 requests per day (Source: Groq Official Docs).
The downside? Groq has fewer models available than the competition. But for those who need fast inference for chatbots, real-time analysis, or stream processing, it's unbeatable.
Google AI Studio — The Veteran That Still Delivers
Even with the December 2025 cuts, Google AI Studio remains a solid option. It offers 1,500 requests per day of Gemini 2.5 Flash, with 1 million tokens of context — enough to send an entire codebase of a complex system in a single call (Source: TokenMix).
The model is multimodal (text, image, audio) and integrated into the Google ecosystem. The speed of ~96 tokens per second isn't impressive next to Cerebras or Groq, but the model quality and the giant context make up for it.
Mistral AI — The French Billionaire
Mistral AI offers the most generous volume: 1 billion tokens per month for free, with access to all their models — Mistral Large, Mistral Medium, Codestral, and Pixtral. The only hurdle is phone verification (Source: AgentDeals / Mistral Official).
For those who work with code, Codestral is one of the best programming models on the market, comparable to Claude Sonnet and GPT-4o. With 1B tokens/month, you can use the model to autocomplete code all day without worrying about limits.
OpenRouter — The Smart Aggregator
OpenRouter doesn't have its own model, but it offers an abstraction layer that unifies 29 free models from providers like DeepSeek, Meta (Llama), Alibaba (Qwen), NVIDIA, and Google (Gemma). All in an API compatible with the OpenAI format — you change the URL and the key, and you're done (Source: CostGoat).
The advantage here is redundancy: if one model goes down, you switch to another without changing a line of code. If a provider tightens the limit, you rotate to the next one.
Stacking Strategy: How to Combine Free Tiers
One of the most valuable insights to emerge from this research is that no single free provider is enough for production — but 3 or 4 combined become a robust platform.
The strategy is simple: divide your workloads by usage profile and distribute them among providers.
| Workload | Ideal Provider | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Chatbot / Conversation | Groq + OpenRouter | Low latency, many models |
| Long document processing | Google AI Studio | 1M token context |
| Code generation and review | Mistral AI (Codestral) | 1B tokens/month for coding |
| Automations and async pipelines | Cerebras | 1M tokens/day, very high throughput |
| Fallback / Redundancy | OpenRouter | Routes to 29 free models |
In practice, it works like this: you use Google AI Studio for long document analysis (contracts, books, codebases), Mistral Codestral to generate and review code, Cerebras for nightly automations that process large batches, and Groq for real-time apps that need fast responses. OpenRouter serves as a "fallback plan" when any of them tightens or goes down.
We've already tested this setup on real projects, and the result is surprising: it's perfectly possible to run an MVP — or even a low-volume production product — without spending a cent on API.
"Real products have been built and launched entirely on free LLM API tiers. The infrastructure is ready. The models are powerful." — Promptt.dev, 2026
In 2026, Free is Strategy, Not Luck
The era of generous free APIs is over for those who relied on a single provider. But for those willing to think in terms of an ecosystem, the moment is better than ever.
What changed wasn't the availability of free AI — it was the intelligence needed to access it. In 2025, you created an OpenAI account and started using it. In 2026, you need a map, a stacking strategy, and a willingness to explore alternative providers.
The good news is that the map exists. The tools are real. And the results — 1 million tokens per day on Cerebras, 1 billion per month on Mistral, 14 thousand daily requests on Groq — prove that, with the right strategy, cutting-edge AI remains within reach for those who don't want to or can't pay.
Or, as a smart developer would say: the free tier didn't die. It just fragmented.
