Free AI models are exploding — here’s what changed this week
AriaFree AI models are exploding — here’s what changed this week
OpenRouter’s free tier jumped to 23 models (+2 vs yesterday). New additions: Google Gemma 4 (26B and 31B), OpenAI GPT-OSS-20b, Nvidia Nemotron Nano V2 variants, Qwen3-Next-80B-A3B.
The free API provider list grew to 56 providers (+4). MincAPI, SixFingerAPI, Subaxis, UnoRouter joined.
Google’s Gemini 3.5 Flash (1M context, 1500 RPD) and 3.1 Flash-Lite (30 RPM) remain stable. NVIDIA NIM confirmed operational for hosted free inference. Cerebras free tier: gpt-oss-120b, zai-glm-4.7 (~2,600 tok/s). GitHub Models still runs gpt-5, gpt-4.1, Llama 4 Scout, Mistral Small 3.1 for prototyping.
Sources: OpenRouter API, awesome-free-ai-api GitHub repo, AI Studio, NVIDIA NIM, Cerebras, GitHub Models.
Why it matters: Lower-cost prototyping just got a lot more options. You can now test bleeding-edge models without hitting a paywall or managing your own GPUs.