The shame page

No free lunch.

A factual directory of “start free” dead ends: paid-only APIs, retired tiers, web playgrounds, BYOK gateways, and free weights that still leave you paying for compute.

This is evidence, not outrage. Providers can leave this page whenever they publish a genuinely free hosted inference offer.

Showing 51 records

AI/ML API

Free Tier Paused

The authoritative current FAQ says the Free Tier is paused; live aliases containing :free do not override that statement.

Ai2 Playground

Web Playground Only

Current Ai2 deployment documentation describes customer-deployed cloud routes; its playground is not a documented operator-funded general developer inference API.

ALIA Spain

Open Models No Public API

Publishes open models and resources, but no stable public developer inference endpoint with current auth and quotas.

Avian API

Prepaid Only

Current models have positive prices and credits must be prepaid; Start Free is signup wording, not a compute allowance.

Chutes

Paid Only

No current provider-funded inference offer was verified.

Cosine

Paid Product No Verified Free Inference

Current Starter plans begin at $19/month with shared model/agent/compute credits. Public model integrations do not establish an automatic free direct API allowance; retain exclusion unless a current provider-funded quota is documented.

CSCS inference service

Project-accounted, not free

Non-SwissAI use consumes project credits converted from allocated node-hours at a published CHF rate.

Darkbloom

No Current Verified Free API

The former public alpha advertised positive model token prices. The current site redirects to Darkbloom's solar-compute product and no current documented free developer inference offer or pricing catalog was found.

DeepInfra

Paid Only

The current public catalog has positive per-token or per-execution prices and no permanent recurring free quota.

Duckk Africa

Prepaid Only Live Service

The live production service documents positive per-token prices, prepaid balance top-ups, and a USD 5 minimum top-up; no automatic free API allowance was found. A separate limited free web chat does not qualify as API inference.

EuroHPC AI Factories access modes

Allocation Or Tenant Compute Not Shared API

Application and allocation infrastructure is not an automatic shared developer inference entitlement.

The Builder Grant URL now renders the Startup Program ($1,000 approved entry, growth to $5,000 tied to paid usage), not the former $25/$100/$250 packs. Track the current program under fal_ai_startup_program instead.

fal Model APIs

Prepaid Only

Sandbox coupons cannot fund API or Workflow calls; only the application-based Builder Grant is potentially free.

Falcon / Technology Innovation Institute

Public Chat And Undocumented API Claim

A public chat and a first-party/partner case study claim an API platform, but no stable developer base URL, authentication flow, free limits, or API reference could be verified.

Featherless AI

Paid Subscription Only

The lowest current plan is paid and monthly credits belong to paid subscriptions.

FlexAI Token Factory ordinary accounts

Prepaid Only No Automatic Credit

Current billing docs say new accounts receive no automatic credit; billing address and card are required for an API key and at least $5 must be added before ordinary inference. The Free label is a rate-limit tier, not zero-price inference.

free-router.tonylee.im

BYOK Only Tooling

The CLI/router aggregates upstream services such as NVIDIA and OpenRouter using user-supplied credentials; it does not fund hosted inference.

FreeLLMAPI.co

Self Hosted BYOK Router

Users self-host the router and supply upstream provider keys.

FriendliAI

Prepaid Only Or Promo Code Only

Current docs describe promotional credits from promo codes or discretionary promotions but promise no automatic signup amount; ordinary access requires purchased credit with a $10 minimum.

No current provider-funded inference offer was verified.

Hugging Face Spaces / Gradio demos

Excluded Provider Class

Many Spaces expose callable Gradio endpoints, but there is no shared quota, catalog guarantee, authentication policy, or availability commitment; individual Spaces may sleep or disappear.

Hyperbolic

Retired

No current provider-funded inference offer was verified.

Inference.net

Gateway only, not free inference

The free plan covers gateway requests and tracing; all live model entries have positive inference prices.

Infermatic

Free UI Only

The $0 plan explicitly has no API access; API access starts on a paid plan.

Research allocations exist, but the July 2026 update says the shared inference service is still being prepared.

Current AI Studio requires purchased credits and has no verified automatic free allowance.

LatamGPT / Copuchat

Public Chat And Weights Only

Public chat and downloadable open weights exist, but no documented general developer inference API was found.

Liquid AI hosted API

Self Hosted Weights Only

Current free offer covers downloadable/on-device models and tooling, not operator-funded remote inference.

LLM-jp

Weights + tooling only

Publishes weights, corpora, and tooling rather than a stable hosted inference API.

MuiRouter

Gateway only, not free inference

The $0 gateway subscription still requires account top-up and charges model list prices; the gateway fee alone is free.

NextBit

Prepaid Only

Current docs and terms describe prepaid positive-price API usage with no quantified automatic free allowance.

NexusRouter.com BYOK gateway

BYOK Only Name Collision

The .com service is a downloadable/configurable BYOK gateway and is unrelated to the possibly qualifying hosted nexusrouter.net record.

Nscale Serverless Inference

Prepaid Only No Automatic Signup Credit

Current onboarding requires adding at least $5 credit. A statement that early users may receive unspecified promotional offers is neither automatic nor a quantified current free allowance.

OpenGradient

Paid X402 Inference

Hosted inference uses x402 or OPG payment rather than a free tier.

OpenI / Qizhi Community compute and model development

Compute Platform Not Shared General API

Free compute and model-development resources exist, but no automatic shared developer inference entitlement is established. A SpeedRun contest offers first-place winners an optional core-model API pass for at most 30 days; exact models, API base/auth and quantitative limits are unpublished.

Petals public chat endpoint

Currently Nonfunctional

A previous live call returned MissingBlocksError because no peers held the required model blocks. The current repository still describes an interruptible research/development community API, not guaranteed hosted capacity; this audit did not repeat generation.

SwarmLLM

Client Mediated Public P2p Alpha No Hosted Gateway

The public alpha exposes localhost:8800 after users install a daemon and depends on peers; it still has no stable operator-hosted public gateway or funded catalog.

Tencent's May 12 retirement notice stopped new purchases and API-key creation on June 30 and shut the legacy Hunyuan console and APIs on September 30, 2026. The retained 1M generation and 1M embedding one-year packages are historical, not currently callable.

Together AI

Prepaid Only

Official billing docs say there are no free trials; API access requires at least a $5 credit purchase.

TypeSafe AI

Waitlist And Paid Direct API

The direct Jev API is waitlist-gated and publishes positive token pricing with no automatic free allocation. OpenCode Zen's temporary jev-1.13-free route is recorded under OpenCode rather than as a TypeSafe direct free offer.

No current provider-funded inference offer was verified.

Wafer

Paid Subscription Or Inference

Current terms describe paid Wafer Pass and inference; third-party claims of a free route lack first-party support.

WebInfer resource pool

Advertised Free But Gateway Nonresolving

First-party pages still advertise a completely free community pool and document api.webinfer.dev, but that documented hostname again returned no DNS records on 2026-10-06. Callability, catalog, signup, and limits remain unverified; alternative gateways were not re-tested.