> NLP Cloud
NLP Cloud is an API platform offering pre-trained and custom models for summarization, classification, embeddings, ASR, speech synthesis and large language models such as GPT-OSS 120B, LLaMA 3.1 405B and ChatDolphin. Its pay-as-you-go plan has no fixed monthly cost and automatically grants a $15 free credit, then bills per request at $0.003 on CPU or $0.005 on GPU with token surcharges for the largest models. Published prepaid plans run from Starter at $29 per month (10 parallel requests) to the Large Language Models plan at $2,499 per month (50 parallel requests), with dedicated fine-tuning plans from $399 per month.
// pros
- Pay-as-you-go has no fixed monthly cost and automatically applies a $15 free credit, with 10 parallel requests that can be increased on request.
- Pricing is split by hardware and only large models add token surcharges: $0.003 per request on CPU, $0.005 on GPU, plus $0.0005 per 1K tokens for ChatDolphin, Yi-34B and Mixtral-8x7B or $0.0018 per 1K tokens for GPT-OSS 120B, LLaMA 3.1 405B and LLaMA 3.3 70B.
- Asynchronous mode raises per-request input limits from 128,000 tokens to 100 million tokens for entities, keywords, summarization and translation, which suits large document batches without chunking client-side.
- Context windows are published per model: 128,000 tokens for GPT-OSS 120B, LLaMA 3.1 405B and fine-tuned LLaMA 3.3 70B versus 8,192 tokens for ChatDolphin, Dolphin Yi-34B and Dolphin Mixtral-8x7B.
- Prepaid plans are prorated automatically on downgrade and can be stopped at any time, with the single stated exception of the non-prorated on-premise plan; rate limiting can also be switched from per minute to per hour or day free of charge on Enterprise and above.
// cons
- The free allowance is a finite $15 credit tied to a pay-as-you-go account that is invoiced after the fact, not a perpetual free tier, and the prepaid Free tier column allows only 2 parallel requests.
- Model choice trades context against surcharge: ChatDolphin-class models cost $0.0005 per 1K tokens but cap context at 8,192 tokens, while GPT-OSS 120B and LLaMA 3.1 405B reach 128,000 tokens at $0.0018 per 1K tokens.
- Fine-tuning requires dedicated-server plans starting at $399 per month, where the Basic plan caps request context at 1,024 tokens, serves 5 parallel requests and responds at about 3 seconds per 50 generated tokens.
- Data-locality options are priced separately at $249 per month each for a specific region or cloud provider, on-premise deployment is $649 per month and explicitly not prorated, and Whisper adds $0.0001 per second of audio on top of the per-request fee.
Use the $15 automatic credit on the pay-as-you-go plan to test specific endpoints rather than to benchmark LLMs, since per-request pricing on CPU at $0.003 is the cheapest way to validate summarization, classification or embeddings. Choose the model by context need first: GPT-OSS 120B or LLaMA 3.1 405B only when you need the 128,000-token window, and ChatDolphin when 8,192 tokens is sufficient, because the token surcharge differs by more than 3x.
written by Mike Fleming, Uprouter editorial · verified against official sources September 16, 2026
How we estimated this: the free allowance is converted to a dollar value using the provider’s own pay-as-you-go rates for the models a typical developer would reach for. When the allowance is metered in requests, tokens or minutes rather than dollars, we assume median usage of the cheapest capable model. Because assumptions are involved, the figure carries the est. flag — treat it as an order of magnitude, not a quote.
note: Official pricing page states that the pay-as-you-go plan automatically gives a $15 FREE credit with no fixed monthly cost (nlpcloud.com/pricing.html, checked 2026-09-16).
| Plan | Type | Monthly | Input /1M | Output /1M | Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Free tier (source-reported) | free | — | — | — | Pay-As-You-Go: new users automatically get ~$15 free credit; phone verification required. Large models (GPT-OSS 120B/LLaMA 3.1 405B/3.3 70B, etc.) at ~$0.0018/1K tokens; pay-as-you-go after credit is used. |
| Free tier | free | — | Free | Free | 1 req/s |
| Subscription | subscription | — | — | — | faster limits |
| Starter | subscription | $29.00/mo | — | — | Includes 10 parallel requests and access to all pre-trained models. |
| Pay-as-you-go (Mixtral) | payg | — | $0.500 | $0.500 | Plus $0.005 per request on GPU. Input/Output rates are symmetric. |
Pricing normalized from public sources — always verify with the provider.
// model prices
| Model | Input /1M | Output /1M | Context |
|---|---|---|---|
| Llama 3.1 405B | — | — | — |
| gpt-oss-120b | — | — | 131k |
| Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | — | — | 131k |
$ Does NLP Cloud have a free tier?
Yes — NLP Cloud offers a free tier that we value at roughly $15.00 in free credits (estimate — derived from rate-limited usage at pay-as-you-go prices). Always confirm current limits on NLP Cloud's official pricing page — free tiers change without notice.
$ How much does NLP Cloud cost per 1M tokens?
NLP Cloud does not publish simple per-1M-token pricing (it may bill per request, per output, or via a subscription plan). Check their official pricing page for exact figures.
$ Is NLP Cloud safe to use?
Uprouter rates NLP Cloud as low risk. Low to medium risk. The free grant is a straightforward $15 credit automatically applied to a pay-as-you-go account, and the underlying billing is per request with clearly published token surcharges, which makes small-scale spend predictable and cancellable. Risks are concentrated in data residency and scaling: region or cloud-provider pinning costs an extra $249 per month each, and on-premise deployment at $649 per month is the only non-prorated plan. Fine-tuning also forces dedicated-server commitments from $399 per month, so any move beyond pre-trained endpoints is a step-change in fixed cost. Risk ratings are editorial, evidence-based, and never influenced by affiliate relationships.
Raw community sentiment, shown unblended. Votes never feed into objective data fields like price, risk, or status — and never into sort order.
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// more_informationprice history · live status · risk & confidence · code snippets
price_history
No recorded changes yet.
live_status
current: upNo probes recorded yet.
Uprouter runs its own probes; best-effort, not a guarantee. Probe results depend on our network location and cadence — for production, always use the provider’s own status page.
risk_&_confidence
Low to medium risk. The free grant is a straightforward $15 credit automatically applied to a pay-as-you-go account, and the underlying billing is per request with clearly published token surcharges, which makes small-scale spend predictable and cancellable. Risks are concentrated in data residency and scaling: region or cloud-provider pinning costs an extra $249 per month each, and on-premise deployment at $649 per month is the only non-prorated plan. Fine-tuning also forces dedicated-server commitments from $399 per month, so any move beyond pre-trained endpoints is a step-change in fixed cost.
Confidence reflects how much verifiable evidence (official docs, probe history, community reports) backs this entry. Risk is our editorial assessment of operator reliability and terms — not financial advice.
code_snippets
# NLP Cloud's own API — get a key from their dashboard
curl https://YOUR-PROVIDER-ENDPOINT/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer THEIR_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "llama-3-1-405b",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Hello" }]
}'Direct to the provider — Uprouter receives nothing; verify their current pricing before purchasing.
Ranked by neutral similarity signals only — live status, free-tier shape and free-credit proximity. Commercial relationships never influence this list.