Yes. As of 2026-09-27, OpenRouter :free model variants (OpenRouter); human step: a person completes a signup form; no stated expiry.
Rotating set of :free model variants — 17 of 458 models carried a :free suffix at $0 prompt and completion when read from openrouter.ai/api/v1/models on 2026-09-27: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 (nano-omni-30b r…
Every OpenRouter offer, and its verdict · Does a provider have a free tier? A–Z
| Field | Value |
|---|---|
| Provider | OpenRouter |
| Category | inference |
| Offer status | available |
| Deal type | free |
| What is free | Rotating set of :free model variants — 17 of 458 models carried a :free suffix at $0 prompt and completion when read from openrouter.ai/api/v1/models on 2026-09-27: NVIDIA Nemotron 3 (nano-omni-30b reasoning, super-120b, ultra-550b, 3.5-content-safety, 3.5-lightning), Thinking Machines Inkling and Inkling Small, Poolside Laguna S/XS 2.1, InclusionAI Ling 3.0 Flash (fin, sante), Google Gemma 4 (26b-a4b-it, 31b-it), Qwen 3.8 27B, Cohere North Mini Code, Liquid LFM 2.5 2.6b, dots-studio Dots 3 Note Preview. Limits: 20 req/min; 50 req/day if lifetime purchases < $10, 1,000 req/day after a one-time $10 credit purchase. |
| Access barrier | api-key |
| How you get a credential | web-form (inferred from the access barrier) |
| Agent-usable | True |
| Evidence | documented |
| Confidence | verified |
| Last verified | 2026-09-27 |
| Source | https://openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits |
| Caveats | ROSTER MOVED 2026-09-16 → 2026-09-27: 20 of 443 became 17 of 458. Gone: InclusionAI Ling 3.0 Flash VL, Nex-AGI N2.5 mini and pro, Z.ai GLM-5.2. New: Qwen 3.8 27B. The limits page (read via a text-rendering route; it is client-rendered) also states that a NEGATIVE credit balance can return 402 even on free models, and that the 1,000/day ceiling is granted from 9 credits purchased to absorb fees. lowest queue priority (frequent 429s); per-model data policies may allow training; the model set rotates and does so fast — until 2026-09-08 this row named the free set as “Llama 3.3 70B, Gemma, DeepSeek variants”, and as of that date neither Llama nor DeepSeek appears among the :free variants at all; only Gemma survives of the three. Treat the model list above as a dated snapshot, not an entitlement, and read openrouter.ai/api/v1/models (filter for ids ending :free) for the current roster. The rate limits, by contrast, were unchanged on re-verification. |
No measured example — this row is evidence: documented: it states what the provider's own page advertised on the date shown, and this worker holds no credential to call it. The provider's documentation is the source: https://openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits
Rendered 2026-10-05 17:57 UTC. Machine-readable: ai-deals.json.