I used to work with deepseek v3 0324 through openrouter and chutes platforms. Then I found out that gemini 2.5 pro became free again for API access, so I made the switch. For my conversations and with a configuration I discovered online, gemini performs much better than the deepseek options I was using before.
Deepseek was really enjoyable to use, but gemini seems superior because of its massive context window that lets it retain very specific information from earlier in our conversations.
Apart from these services I already know about, are there other completely free API options out there?
OpenAI still gives new accounts free credits, but they expire after a few months. Try Groq’s free tier - you get Llama models with crazy fast speeds and decent rate limits for personal stuff. Replicate’s another solid choice. They host open source models and throw in free compute time each month. Their Mixtral setups work great.
Here’s what I learned bouncing between services: always have backups ready. You’ll hit rate limits eventually. Just heads up - these free tiers change all the time. What’s available today might be different next month. Also, most want credit card verification even for free accounts. Annoying, but I get why they do it.
Hugging Face has a solid free tier through their Inference API - you’ll hit rate limits but can run Llama and Mistral variants without burning through quotas too fast for moderate use. Cohere’s free tier is another good option with decent monthly limits on their command models. I’ve used Anthropic’s Claude free tier too, though it’s more restrictive than Gemini. Here’s the thing - truly unlimited free access doesn’t really exist anymore. Most services cap you daily or monthly. These alternatives work great for experimenting and lighter projects, but if you need heavy sustained usage, you’ll eventually have to pay up.
Check out together.ai - they’ve got a solid free tier with tons of open source models. If you’ve got decent hardware, run ollama locally - totally free after setup. Perplexity API gives you some monthly free credits but it’s pretty limited.