Best free LLM APIs (2026)
Which models can you call for $0 today, and what are you giving up?
Rebuilt from live model data · August 3, 2026
How we ranked
Models priced at $0 for both input and output on OpenRouter, ranked by Intelligence Index.
Top 3 for best free llm apis
- 1
Nemotron 3 Ultra (free)
Intelligence index: 37.8 Free in / Free out per 1M 1M context 1 providerNVIDIA Nemotron 3 Ultra is an open frontier-reasoning and orchestration model from NVIDIA, with 55B active parameters out of 550B total (MoE). Built on a hybrid Transformer-Mamba mixture-of-experts architecture, it...
Open weights Tool calling Reasoning Released Jun 4, 2026 - 2
Gemma 4 31B (free)
Intelligence index: 29.4 Free in / Free out per 1M 262K context 1 providerGemma 4 31B Instruct is Google DeepMind's 30.7B dense multimodal model supporting text and image input with text output. Features a 256K token context window, configurable thinking/reasoning mode, native function...
Open weights Vision Tool calling Reasoning Released Apr 2, 2026 - 3
Gemma 4 26B A4B (free)
Intelligence index: 25.7 Free in / Free out per 1M 262K context 2 providersGemma 4 26B A4B IT is an instruction-tuned Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model from Google DeepMind. Despite 25.2B total parameters, only 3.8B activate per token during inference — delivering near-31B quality at...
Open weights Vision Tool calling Reasoning Released Apr 3, 2026
Full ranking
| # | Model | Intelligence index | Output / 1M | Context | Providers | Weights |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) | 37.8 | Free | 1M | 1 | Open |
| 2 | Gemma 4 31B (free) | 29.4 | Free | 262K | 1 | Open |
| 3 | Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) | 25.7 | Free | 262K | 2 | Open |
| 4 | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | 25.4 | Free | 262K | 1 | Open |
| 5 | North Mini Code (free) | 19.8 | Free | 256K | 1 | Open |
| 6 | gpt-oss-20b (free) | 14.9 | Free | 131K | 1 | Open |
| 7 | Nemotron 3 Nano 30B A3B (free) | 14.2 | Free | 256K | 1 | Open |
| 8 | Free Models Router | — | Free | 200K | 0 | Closed |
| 9 | Lyria 3 Clip Preview | — | Free | 1.0M | 1 | Closed |
| 10 | Lyria 3 Pro Preview | — | Free | 1.0M | 1 | Closed |
| 11 | Ling-3.0-flash (free) | — | Free | 262K | 1 | Closed |
| 12 | Nemotron 3 Nano Omni (free) | — | Free | 256K | 1 | Open |
FAQ
Which models can you call for $0 today, and what are you giving up?
Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) leads for Best free LLM APIs with intelligence index 37.8, at Free per 1M output tokens. Gemma 4 31B (free) (29.4) and Gemma 4 26B A4B (free) (25.7) follow. Models priced at $0 for both input and output on OpenRouter, ranked by Intelligence Index.
How is this ranking produced?
Models priced at $0 for both input and output on OpenRouter, ranked by Intelligence Index. The list rebuilds from the live model catalogue on every deploy, so a model that launches or changes price appears here without an editor rewriting the page. Last rebuild: August 3, 2026.
What does the top pick cost to run?
Pricing for Nemotron 3 Ultra (free) is not published through OpenRouter.