Free AI Router
39 free ai routers with no paid tier, ranked by verified free-credit value — live status probes, community risk ratings, no pay-to-rank.
$283.67 in free credits available
$ 39 entries match — showing 1–24 · sort: Free credits ↓
- Free relayAPI keyup917msupdated 4h agoagentrouter.orgsource · agent-router.org/pricingoverview
Agent Router is an open-source, public-welfare AI API aggregation platform designed to unify access to agents and MCP tools. It is 'forever free' for both users and developers, providing a discovery registry for skills (ClawHub) and a live A2A directory.
free quotaOffers $100-$200 free credit bonus for new accounts to bootstrap agent usage.
free modelsClaude (full Claude Code family)DeepSeekZhipu GLMgpt-5see agentrouter.org’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayAPI keyup1337msupdated 4h agoanyrouter.topsource · anyrouter.topoverview
AnyRouter is a third-party relay that forwards Claude Code and OpenAI Codex traffic through an Anthropic- and OpenAI-compatible endpoint at https://anyrouter.top. Registration is via GitHub or LinuxDO, and the official docs advertise a $50 free credit on signup with no credit card required, plus $50 for each side on a successful referral. Rates are expressed as billing multipliers rather than an open price list - the docs recommend Claude 4 Sonnet for routine work because it bills at one fifth of Claude 4 Opus. Dated notices track model availability (GPT 6 on 2026-09-05, GPT 5.5 on 2026-05-26) alongside a documented record of attacks, abuse-driven registration freezes and a one-day outage.
free quotadocs.anyrouter.top states the signup grant as $50 free credit with no credit card required, plus $50 for each party on a successful referral (registration notice on anyrouter.top, fetched 2026-09-16).
free modelsClaude 4 OpusClaude 4 Sonnetsee anyrouter.top’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayAPI keyup882msupdated 1d agomonkeyapi.apimonkey.onlinesource · monkeyapi.apimonkey.onlineoverview
MonkeyAPI (monkeyapi.apimonkey.online) is an anonymous individual relay service built on the New API framework. In late 2026, the service operator reported penalties for violations and announced plans to migrate, significantly reducing quotas and referral benefits.
free quotaPreviously offered registration credit and check-in/referral bonuses, but notices state it is 'cutting referral and registration quotas for cost control' and will adjust after migrating; no stable public free flagship quota.
free models— none trackedsee monkeyapi.apimonkey.online’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayAPI keyup359msupdated 4h agofreetheai.xyzsource · freetheai.xyzoverview
FreeTheAi is a free OpenAI-compatible API gateway aggregating 80+ models behind a single base URL. It operates via Discord-based key signup and daily check-ins, emphasizing persistent free access for developers and roleplay users without credit card requirements.
free quotaFully free, no card; daily /checkin (key validation + human challenge) required before calls. Default cap 250 successful calls/day (role-based bumps) ~ $7.5/mo equivalent at ~1K tokens/call, $1/1M tokens.
free models— none trackedsee freetheai.xyz’s free quota / risk review → - Free productAPI keyup61msupdated 4h agopollinations.aisource · pollinations.aioverview
Pollinations.ai is a Berlin-based open-source platform providing a signup-free, OpenAI-compatible API for text, image, and audio generation. It aggregates multiple open-weights models (DeepSeek, Qwen, Mistral) and offers them for free to foster creative AI development.
free quotaBasic use needs no signup and no API key; new Pollen credit system gives ~1.5 Pollen/week free, with some models/higher limits requiring an account or paid tier. Pollen has no published USD rate - not quantifiable.
free modelsOpenAI GPT-5 (Mini/Nano/5.2)Google Gemini 3 Flash / 2.5 Flash LiteMistral Small 3.2xAI Grok (incl. grok-reasoning)DeepSeek V3.2Qwen3 Codersee pollinations.ai’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayAPI keyup323msupdated 4h agochatanywhere.techsource · chatanywhere.tech/pricingoverview
ChatAnywhere is a widely used free LLM relay. Users bind a GitHub account to get a free API key and access GPT-4o, Claude, and Gemini models through an OpenAI-compatible interface, optimized for access from mainland China.
free quotaGitHub-bound free key: 10,000 points/day with per-model caps (GPT-5/4o/4.1 5/day, DeepSeek 30/day, mini models 100/day, ~200 req/day total) ≈ $2/mo; personal non-commercial use only.
free modelsgeminigrokQwenKimiminimaxclaude+7see chatanywhere.tech’s free quota / risk review → - Monitor / DirectorySystemup280msupdated 4h agorouterpark.comsource · routerpark.comoverview
RouterPark is a directory and monitoring site for unofficial and free AI model relays. It catalogues third-party Claude and GPT proxies, providing a dashboard for status and latency while offering its own unified entry point for multiple 'free' upstreams.
free quotaDirectory is free/login-free; any.routerpark.com proxy (ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL) signup credit: site advertises $20 but probes report ~$2 (+~$10 for posting). Conservative: $2; quota depends on third-party relays.
free modelsclaude-opus-4-6claude-opus-4-7claude-opus-4-8see routerpark.com’s free quota / risk review → - Monitor / DirectorySystemup231msupdated 4h agohvoy.aisource · hvoyai.comoverview
Hvoy AI is a specialized diagnostic and directory site for third-party AI API gateways. It performs continuous latency, uptime, and model-adulteration testing to help developers benchmark and select relay providers. Mirrored at hvoyai.com.
free quotaThe site is primarily a checker/comparison tool; minor perks: ~20 points on signup, ~10 points to claim one free token, ~20 points for sharing, plus an occasional ~5 CNY (≈$0.74) redeem code; it claims a small daily 'freebie' of reverse-proxied sonnet-4.6/gpt5.3 (e.g. ~50 sonnet4.6 calls/day), with no guaranteed quota or stability.
free modelssonnet-4.6 (reverse-proxied, limited freebie)gpt5.3 (reverse-proxied, limited freebie)see hvoy.ai’s free quota / risk review → - Free productAPI keyunknownupdated 22d agoplatform.deepseek.comsource · deepseek.comoverview
DeepSeek's official API serves the current V4.1-Flash and V4-Pro models with 1M-token context and 384K max output, from $0.15/$0.60 per 1M in/out off-peak (Flash) — peak hours bill at 2x, cached input drops to $0.003/M. One key exposes both an OpenAI-compatible and an Anthropic-compatible endpoint, and sign-up grants a free token balance that is deducted before any top-up.
free quotaFree 'granted balance' of ~5M tokens at sign-up (deducted before top-ups per official billing rules); $0.70 is an estimate at V4-Flash off-peak rates.
free modelsDeepSeek ChatDeepSeek-R1DeepSeek V4 Flash Vision ExpDeepSeek V3.1DeepSeek V4 Pro 0813deepseek-v4-pro+3see platform.deepseek.com’s free quota / risk review → - Free productAPI keyWeb cookieup33msupdated 4h agohuggingface.cosource · huggingface.co/chatoverview
Hugging Face Inference Providers routes one API key across 200+ models from multiple inference providers at the providers' own rates — no markup. Every user gets monthly credits ($0.10 on the Free plan; $2.00 PRO; $2.00/seat Team & Enterprise) applied automatically before pay-as-you-go; a BYOK mode routes through your own provider keys instead.
free quotaOfficial docs: $0.10/month Inference-Providers credits for Free users (PRO $2.00/month, Team/Enterprise $2.00/seat), credited monthly and applied before pay-as-you-go (confirmed 2026-09-16).
free modelsLlama familyQwen familyGemma familyMistral familyDeepSeek familyMeta: Llama 3.1 405B Instruct+2see huggingface.co’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayAPI keyup1557msupdated 1d ago9router.xunleiyk.comsource · 9router.comoverview
9Router is a specialized AI API router designed for smart fallback and cost optimization, allowing users to pool their own subscription keys. It emphasizes 'unlimited free AI coding' by routing through free models or maximizing existing subscriptions via a local proxy or VPS.
free quota9Router is free open-source self-hosted router software (never charges); 9router.xunleiyk.com is a hosted instance ('AI Infrastructure Management' panel, auth-gated). No credits/billing tiers apply.
free models— none trackedsee 9router.xunleiyk.com’s free quota / risk review → - Commercial aggregatorUpstream proxyunknownupdated 28d agonpmjs.comsource · npmjs.com/package/9routeroverview
Open-source local AI router (npm package '9router', MIT license, Next.js, by decolua). Connects CLI coding tools (Claude Code, Codex, Cursor, Gemini CLI, Cline, OpenCode, Antigravity, Copilot and any OpenAI/Claude-compatible client) to 40+ AI providers and 100+ models through a local OpenAI/Claude-compatible endpoint. Features: RTK token compression (20-40% savings on tool results), auto-fallback (subscription -> cheap -> free), multi-account round-robin, web dashboard. Self-hosted; users bring their own upstream accounts/keys. Implementation inspired by CLIProxyAPI.
free quotaSoftware is free (MIT); it routes through user-provided upstream accounts, no credits or prices from the router itself.
free modelsGPT-5.1GPT-5.5 Progpt-5.3-codexClaude Sonnet 4.5Claude Opus 4.5Gemini 3.8 Flash+1see npmjs.com’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayNo authunknownupdated 28d agoaihorde.netsource · aihorde.netoverview
AI Horde (Stable Horde) is a free, volunteer-run, community-powered network of donated GPUs that generates AI images (Stable Diffusion, SDXL, Flux and other diffusion models) and text. Anonymous access is available with the shared key 0000000000 at lowest priority; registering for kudos raises priority.
free quotaFree kudos-based system; no quantified monthly USD credit.
free modelsflux-devflux-schnellflux-1-1-proFLUX.1 Schnell (AI Horde)SDXL (AI Horde)see aihorde.net’s free quota / risk review → - Monitor / DirectorySystemup64msupdated 4h agoall-api-hub.qixing1217.topsource · all-api-hub.qixing1217.topoverview
All API Hub is an open-source browser extension and account manager for the New-API/Sub2API ecosystem. It provides a unified dashboard for tracking balances, usage, and auto-checking across multiple relay providers, rather than serving as an API endpoint itself.
free quotaFree open-source tool that grants no model quota itself; its docs only teach users how to farm check-in/free allowances on other relays. No free API value is provided here.
free models— none trackedsee all-api-hub.qixing1217.top’s free quota / risk review → - Free productWeb cookieunknownupdated 28d agoarena.aisource · arena.aioverview
Arena.ai (formerly LMArena / Chatbot Arena, lmarena.ai) is a free, anonymous multi-model chat + blind A/B voting service that powers the public LLM/image/code leaderboards. It rotates a large lineup of frontier and open models. This route is an unofficial web-cookie integration (arena-auth cookie, optional Cloudflare clearance/reCAPTCHA tokens); the site also supports anonymous sessions but automated access is rate-limited and subject to bot checks.
free quotaA free tier is available; the exact credit value is not quantified.
free modelsgpt-5claude-sonnet-4-6gemini-3.1-pro-previewGrok 4.3see arena.ai’s free quota / risk review → - Free productNo authunknownupdated 28d agoaugmentcode.comsource · augmentcode.com/product/clioverview
Auggie is Augment Code's free, terminal-based agentic coding CLI (npm i -g @augmentcode/auggie) that runs context-aware agents locally with interactive and headless modes. It is multi-model (Claude, GPT, or bring-your-own-key); the broader Augment 'Cosmos' platform is the company's enterprise offering.
free quotaFree CLI tier; enterprise/Cosmos pricing not publicly quantified on the fetched pages.
free modelsclaude-sonnet-4-6GPT-4see augmentcode.com’s free quota / risk review → - Commercial aggregatorUpstream proxyunknownupdated 28d agocliproxyapi.devsource · router-for-me/CLIProxyAPIoverview
Open-source Go proxy server (MIT license, router-for-me/CLIProxyAPI) that wraps CLI subscriptions - Google Antigravity/Gemini, OpenAI ChatGPT Codex (GPT series), Anthropic Claude Code, xAI Grok Build, Moonshot Kimi - and exposes them as OpenAI (incl. Responses), Gemini (incl. Interactions), Claude, Codex and Grok compatible API endpoints. OAuth login flows, multi-account round-robin load balancing, streaming/non-streaming/WebSocket, function calling, multimodal input, Management API, and an embeddable Go SDK. Self-hosted; users bring their own upstream accounts/keys. Desktop wrapper: EasyCLIProxyAPI.
free quotaSoftware is free (MIT); access to upstream models depends on user-provided subscriptions/API keys, no credits or prices from the proxy itself.
free modelsGPT-5.6 Sol ProGPT-5.1gpt-5.3-codexClaude Sonnet 4.5Claude Opus 4.5Gemini 3.8 Flash+1see cliproxyapi.dev’s free quota / risk review → - Free productNo authunknownupdated 28d agoamelia.chipotle.comsource · amelia.chipotle.comoverview
Chipotle 'Pepper' is the free, anonymous customer-support chatbot on amelia.chipotle.com, powered by IPsoft Amelia. It requires no login (anonymous sessions) and answers only Chipotle-related questions; off-topic prompts are refused.
free quotaFree anonymous support chatbot; no credit system.
free modelsPepper (IPsoft Amelia)see amelia.chipotle.com’s free quota / risk review → - Free productNo authunknownupdated 28d agodocs.devin.aisource · docs.devin.ai/work-with-devin/devin-clioverview
no-auth access — no key or sign-in required. Authentication is owned by the official Devin CLI in its isolated bridge volume. This entry is an access surface/agent — it routes to third-party models rather than hosting its own.
free quotaA free tier is available; the exact credit value is not quantified.
free models— none trackedsee docs.devin.ai’s free quota / risk review → - Free productWeb cookieunknownupdated 28d agodola.comsource · dola.comoverview
Dola (dola.com) — ByteDance's international AI chat assistant (international Doubao) serving the Doubao Seed model family. Unofficial browser/cookie integration.
free quotaA free tier is available; the exact credit value is not quantified.
free modelsByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6 FlashByteDance Seed: Seed-2.0-MiniByteDance Seed: Seed-2.0-LiteByteDance Seed: Seed 1.6Seed 2.1 TurboSeed-2.0-Codesee dola.com’s free quota / risk review → - Free productNo authunknownupdated 28d agoduckduckgo.comsource · duck.aioverview
Duck.ai is DuckDuckGo's free, private AI chat (also surfaced at duckduckgo.com/duckchat). It requires no account and offers chat, voice, image, and search across models including OpenAI GPT (e.g., '5.6 Luna') and Claude.
free quotaFree anonymous chat; an 'Upgrade'/Pro option exists but pricing not quantified on fetched pages.
free modelsgpt-5.6-lunaclaude-sonnet-4-6DuckDuckGo Searchsee duckduckgo.com’s free quota / risk review → - Official free tierAPI keyunknownupdated 26d agofreeinference.orgsource · freeinference.orgoverview
FreeInference (freeinference.org) is an OpenAI- and Anthropic-compatible inference API offering frontier open models free of charge to the research community, with no credit card required at signup. It is presented as built at Harvard SEAS (MadSys Lab) and lists NVIDIA and Harvard SEAS as sponsors. The quota is described only as a "generous quota for research and prototyping"; no numeric limit is published, and the /pricing and /limits paths both return 404. The site carries a banner warning that GLM, Minimax and Kimi will be discontinued on Oct 1, and on Aug 11, 2026 it announced that new account onboarding is paused because the service is at capacity.
free quotaNo free tier stated on official pages (checked 2026-09-16): freeinference.org offers a free account with a "Generous quota for research and prototyping" but publishes no dollar or token figure, and freeinference.org/pricing returns 404.
free modelsQwen3 CoderMiniMax-M3DeepSeek V4 FlashGLM-5.1see freeinference.org’s free quota / risk review → - Free relayAPI keyunknownupdated Sep 6, 2026freebuff.comsource · freebuff.comoverview
Freebuff is a specialized AI API relay often associated with developer automation and coding tools. It provides programmatic access to high-end models for free or via community-shared keys, primarily aimed at script-based integration and tool builders.
free quotaNo public free-tier information found in the source reference; treat free-tier availability as unverified rather than confirmed absent.
free modelsgpt-5.6-lunaDeepSeek V4 FlashSolar Pro 4deepseek-v4-prosee freebuff.com’s free quota / risk review → - Official free tierAPI keyup18msupdated 4h agomodels.github.aisource · github-modelsoverview
GitHub Models was GitHub's hosted model playground, model catalog, inference API and bring-your-own-key service, and GitHub previously presented it as separate from GitHub Copilot. GitHub's official documentation now states that as of July 30, 2026, GitHub Models has been fully retired: the playground, model catalog, inference API and BYOK are no longer available to any customer. The same page directs users needing model access to Azure AI Foundry and users wanting AI workflows on GitHub to GitHub Copilot.
free quotaNo free tier stated on official pages; GitHub Models was fully retired on July 30, 2026 with no playground, catalog, inference API or BYOK access remaining (checked 2026-09-16).
free modelsLlama familyGPT-4oGPT-4o-minisee models.github.ai’s free quota / risk review →
Every entry answers to the community
The index is expansive; the community keeps it honest. Votes, reviews and verified corrections feed straight back into rankings and data confidence.
- Vote
Upvote routers that deliver, downvote the ones that don’t — the score re-ranks the index.
- Review
Evidence-based reviews with verification tags. Ratings, not vibes.
- Verify
Corrections that survive review flip the entry to verified — with the evidence on file.
Anyone can edit this index
Every router page has an edit button — propose corrections to descriptions, prices and free tiers. Editors review each proposal against primary sources before it goes live.
- Propose
Open a router page, hit the edit button, and detail your proposed corrections.
- Review
Editors rigorously verify every proposed correction against primary sources.
- Live
Accepted edits are published instantly and logged in the public journal.
Recomputed from the live AI provider directory on every request — counts shift as providers change their tiers and pricing.
// the guide
Free AI Router
12 min read · published October 2026 · updated October 2026
39 free ai routers with no paid tier, ranked by verified free-credit value — live status probes, community risk ratings, no pay-to-rank.
Research and writing by the UPROUTER.ONLINE research team · verified against provider pricing pages on October 2026. Independently operated directory — no pay-to-rank, no affiliation with listed providers.
- A free ai router is an AI API router whose only access mode is free — no card, no subscription, no upgrade path. UPROUTER tracks 39 of them; the sample is the top 10 by verified free-credit value.
- Free access comes in three honest shapes: one-time signup grants (e.g. a granted balance that depletes), recurring daily/monthly quotas, and shared no-auth endpoints.
- Risk is the defining trade-off: several entries are community relays that pool upstream keys, and upstream providers' terms (OpenAI's included) prohibit that pattern — the risk badge and rationale on each entry say which concern applies.
- Ordering is a disclosed data sort — free-credit value descending, unquantified values last, ties alphabetical. Community votes and affiliate relationships never change it.
- If you need production reliability rather than zero cost, look at /best-free-ai-api-keys (282 free tiers with paid paths) instead.
39 free ai routers with no paid tier, ranked by verified free-credit value — live status probes, community risk ratings, no pay-to-rank.
Written by Mike Fleming — Founder & Editor. He runs the directory, writes the entry research and reviews every page here; corrections go to the contact page.
top 10 of 39 — by free-credit value
| Provider | Free credit value | Access | Risk | Status |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| AgentRouter | $200.00 | api-key | medium | up |
| AnyRouter | $50.00 | api-key | medium | up |
| APIMonkey | $14.88 | api-key | high | up |
| FreeTheAI | $7.50 | api-key | high | up |
| Pollinations | $5.00 | api-key | low | up |
What is a free ai router?
A free ai router is an AI API router with no paid tier at all: the only way to use it is the free access it offers, and there is nothing to buy once that access runs out. In the UPROUTER dataset this is the routerType "free-only" — 39 published entries as of the last check, out of 388 tracked routers. The other three router types exist for contrast: freemium (38 free tiers plus paid options across the directory), paid-only, and enterprise-first offerings.
A router is a service that exposes AI model APIs — usually an OpenAI-compatible /chat/completions endpoint — so one key reaches models that otherwise sit behind several vendor consoles. Free-only routers are interesting precisely because they remove the billing surface entirely: no card on file, no spend limit to configure, no invoice. What you give up is the exit ramp. A freemium router lets you start free and pay as you grow; a free ai router caps out where its free access ends.
The 39 entries fall into recognizable shapes. Some are platforms that are free as a business model (a shared endpoint anyone can call, or a free credit grant for trying the product). Others are community projects that relay upstream inference. The access column in the sample below tells you which: "API key" means you register and get a key that encodes your free allowance; "No auth" means the endpoint is callable without any credential at all — convenient, and also why operators can revoke it unilaterally at any moment.
What "no paid tier" actually changes about the decision
The absence of a paid tier is not just a price point; it changes the risk profile. With a freemium provider you are a customer: terms of service apply to a defined account, support channels exist, and the provider has a financial reason to keep the free tier roughly as documented (it is their acquisition funnel). With a free-only router you are a guest. The access can be rationed, tightened or switched off by an operator decision, and your code will only find out by failing.
That makes free-only routers a genuinely good fit for specific jobs and a bad one for others. Good fit: prototypes where you are learning the model's behavior, local development, low-volume automation (a nightly job, a small personal tool), and education, where the point is wiring up the call. Bad fit: anything user-facing or time-bound, anything where a silent rate-limit change at 9am costs you money, and anything that needs an SLA — no free-only service in this slice offers one, because there is no paid side to attach one to.
There is also a data-handling angle: a no-auth relay cannot hold you to a data policy, and your prompts may sit in shared infrastructure you cannot audit. For sensitive inputs, prefer "API key" entries with a named operator, and read the risk rationale first.
How the free access on these routers is built
Three mechanisms cover nearly everything in this slice, and they fail differently, so it is worth knowing which one a given entry uses — the entry page records it in the free-credit note with the source URL.
One-time grants. The operator credits your account with a fixed allowance at signup, and the balance depletes. DeepSeek is the cleanest example: its pricing page states that fees are deducted from a topped-up balance "with a preference for using the granted balance first when both balances are available" — the granted balance is the free part, and once it is gone, the account is a paying account or nothing. On a free-only router the second option is the only one, so the grant is the whole relationship.
Recurring quotas. Some platforms reset free usage on a schedule rather than a balance. Cloudflare's Workers AI free tier, for example, publishes explicit daily limits that "reset daily at 00:00 UTC"; the dataset's free-credit value for such entries is a normalization of the quota at the provider's own pay-as-you-go rate, which is why the figure is an estimate and flagged where the assumption was ours.
Shared endpoints. The router serves inference from pooled capacity and meters nobody individually. Hugging Face's Inference Providers route a single token to eighteen partner providers and state "no extra markup on provider rates" — that is the aggregator model applied to free access; Pollinations runs the same shape (one OpenAI-compatible API for text, image, audio, video) with "free Pollen for prototypes & testing". Shared capacity is the most convenient and the most revocable: no contract protects you when the operator changes their mind.
Risk: who runs a free router, and why it matters here more than elsewhere
Every entry in this directory carries a community-evidence risk rating (low / medium / high / unrated) with the reasoning on the entry page, but the rating matters most on this slice. The reason: the free-only business model attracts relays that pool API keys obtained through other people's accounts or through upstream free tiers, and that pattern sits in direct tension with upstream providers' terms. OpenAI's usage policies prohibit sharing accounts or reselling access to the API; a relay that fronts shared keys is structurally exposed to being cut off, and your application inherits that exposure.
The dataset does not try to hide this distinction. Entries whose operator identity, terms or funding are unclear tend to carry "medium" or "high" with a rationale naming the specific concern (young service, vague terms, unclear data handling, ToS friction — the rubric is on each entry and summarized on /about). "Unrated" means the evidence is not there yet, not that the entry is clean. Treat a high-risk free relay as a convenience endpoint you can lose at any time, and design around that rather than discovering it.
What we verify, and what we do not
To keep this page honest about its own limits: UPROUTER runs best-effort status probes against each endpoint (the "status" column and the probe history on each entry), normalizes published free-credit figures into comparable USD estimates and flags every estimate , and records the date each figure was last checked. We do not benchmark latency or throughput, do not guarantee uptime, and do not re-verify each provider's terms — the ToS claims link to the providers' own policy pages, which change. Free tiers are the most volatile part of any AI pricing table; when in doubt, the provider's pricing page is the source of truth, and the entry page links it.
Choosing among free ai routers: the criteria that actually separate them
Credit value is the sample's sort key because it is the one number comparable across the three free-access shapes — but it is not the only criterion, and a big one-time grant is not the same asset as a daily quota. Walk the columns in this order: access first (API-key entries are revocable per account and come with terms; no-auth entries are revocable in principle and come with none), then risk (the rationale on the entry names the specific concern — an established platform's medium rating and a nameless relay's medium rating are different animals), then model count (one small model is a different tool than the open frontier), and only then status — an official platform that is down comes back; a relay that is down is probably gone.
Two honest shortcuts. If your job is "any recent open model, cheaply, right now", start from the top of the sample and read down until the access shape and risk tier fit your threat model. If your job is "free today, paid path tomorrow", you are in the wrong slice by definition — /best-free-ai-api-keys lists the 282 free tiers with paid paths, where the free tier is the on-ramp rather than the whole road, and /directory?type=paid-only carries the other end of the spectrum.
How to evaluate a free ai router before you build on it
1. Open the entry and read the free-credit note in full: it states the shape of the free access (grant, quota, shared), the source URL it was normalized from, and whether the figure is an
2. Check the risk badge and read the rationale. A "high" with a named ToS concern means the endpoint can disappear by policy, not just by failure — decide whether that is acceptable for your use.
3. Look at the live status and the probe history on the entry. "Unknown" means we have not had a recent clean probe, not that it is down; "down" on a relay is often terminal.
4. Run your own smoke test: one request to the OpenAI-compatible endpoint with a prompt representative of your workload. Note the error shape when you hit a limit — it tells you what the failure looks like when your real traffic meets it.
5. Read the provider's terms on key sharing, reselling and data retention. For no-auth relays, note what the terms say about who may send prompts through the endpoint.
6. Check the quota reset rule in the provider docs (daily, monthly, one-time) — a monthly reset and an emptying grant are different commitments.
7. Configure a fallback before you need one: a second router from /best-free-ai-api-keys in your client config means a revoked endpoint is a config change, not an outage.
How this page is built
Predicate — Inclusion is the dataset predicate routerType = "free-only" (only free usage available) over published, non-internal entries. 39 entries matched at last check. Entries that add a paid or freemium path are excluded by definition — they live on /best-free-ai-api-keys.
Sort — Free-credit value (creditValueUsd) descending. Entries without a quantified value sort after quantified ones (nulls last); ties break alphabetically by name. Community votes, reviews and commercial relationships never enter the sort.
Freshness — Free-credit values carry a per-entry last-verified date; entries unverified for 45+ days are flagged stale per the methodology on /about. The "status" column is a best-effort probe result from our network — a measurement, not a guarantee. Counts and the sample recompute from the live dataset on each request.
Limitations — We do not benchmark latency or throughput, do not guarantee uptime, do not re-verify each provider's terms text, and cannot confirm how long any free access will persist — free tiers are the most volatile part of AI pricing. Figures marked are normalized estimates from public sources, not provider-published totals.
Full methodology, probe cadence and the correction pathway: about & methodology · raw data: public dataset (CC BY 4.0) · pricing and status on every row are measurements with dates, not guarantees.
// sources & references
- Public dataset (CSV, CC BY 4.0) (UPROUTER.ONLINE)
- Models & Pricing — api-docs.deepseek.com (DeepSeek)
- Inference Providers documentation (Hugging Face)
- pollinations.ai — platform overview (Pollinations)
- Workers AI pricing & free-tier limits (Cloudflare)
- Usage policies (OpenAI)
- About & methodology (risk rubric, 45-day staleness, probes) (UPROUTER.ONLINE)
// faq
Frequently asked questions
What exactly is a free ai router?
A router (an API service exposing AI models through one endpoint) whose only access mode is free — in the dataset, routerType "free-only". You cannot buy more of it. The 39 entries here range from official free platforms to community relays; the access and risk columns tell you which you are looking at.
Do free ai routers need an API key?
Some do and some don't. The "Access" column on each row shows it: "API key" entries give you a personal key that encodes your free allowance (usually with signup), while "No auth" endpoints are callable without any credential. Keyed access is revocable per account; no-auth access is revocable in principle.
Do I need a credit card for any of these?
Most entries in this slice do not — that is part of the appeal. A few platforms attach a card for abuse prevention even though the tier is free; the entry page records the access requirement, so check the specific row rather than assuming.
Is it safe to build on a free ai router?
For prototypes, learning and low-volume automation — yes, with eyes open: the endpoint can be rationed or revoked by an operator decision, and no-auth relays have no data policy to hold. For user-facing production, no free-only service offers the guarantees you need; pair it with a freemium fallback from /best-free-ai-api-keys.
Why does this list only cover 39 routers?
Because that is the honest size of the free-only slice of the directory: entries where the only access mode is free. The remaining routers have a paid, freemium or enterprise path, and they live on /best-free-ai-api-keys (282 free tiers of every shape) and the full directory. Shrinking or padding the slice to hit a number would make the page worse, so it keeps the predicate as-is.
How is the free-credit value calculated?
Each provider's published free allowance — signup bonus, daily or monthly quota, included usage — is normalized into USD at that provider's own pay-as-you-go rates where one exists. Where a figure required an assumption, it is flagged on the entry; where it could not be quantified honestly, the row shows "not quantified" and sorts to the bottom instead of carrying a made-up number.
How is the list ordered?
Free-credit value descending; entries without a quantified value sort after quantified ones, and ties break alphabetically by name. It is a data sort, never sponsored — no affiliate, referral or commercial relationship changes the order, and community votes are displayed but excluded from it.
Do community votes or reviews change the ranking?
No. Votes and reviews are shown on each entry as a signal about real-world experience (the review tags include "verified free tier" and "hit rate limits"), but the sort rule above is the only thing that orders this page. That separation is deliberate: the list should survive being disliked by a loud minority, and disliked entries should survive being a data favorite.
What happens when a free ai router stops working?
Practically: your fallback kicks in if you configured one — the evaluation steps urge it, because free-only endpoints are the most revocable class in the directory. For the record: the status column reflects best-effort probes, and the entry keeps its probe history.
Where does this data come from?
From UPROUTER's public dataset (downloaded from /api/dataset, CC BY 4.0): 388 published entries with pricing, free-credit values, risk ratings, probes and verification dates. This page recomputes counts and sample per request, so 39 moves as entries change.