Hi all,
are you aware of any free ai models which I could use for aichat? Or how did you do it? Are you paying for api keys? I want to just use it for my private projects. If I for example would use openai how much does it cost for let's say 50 prompts a month?
Sorry completely new to this.

Here’s a casual Reddit post you could make about getting free API access using GitHub Marketplace:

Title: How to Get Free API Access (Like GPT-4) Using GitHub Marketplace

Hey everyone,

I just found out you can use some pretty powerful AI APIs (like GPT-4.1, o3, Llama, Mistral, etc.) totally free through GitHub Marketplace, and I wanted to share how it works for anyone who’s interested in experimenting or building stuff without spending money.

How to do it:

1. Sign up for GitHub (if you don’t already have an account).

2. Go to the GitHub Marketplace Models section (just search “GitHub Marketplace models” if you can’t find it).

3. Browse the available models and pick the one you want to use.

4. You’ll need to generate a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT) to authenticate your API requests. Just go to your GitHub settings, make a new token, and use that in your API calls.

5. Each model has its own usage limits (like 50 requests/day, or a certain number of tokens per request), but it’s more than enough for testing and small projects.

Why is this cool?

• You can try out advanced AI models for free, no payment info needed.

• Great for learning, prototyping, or just messing around.

• No need to download huge models or set up fancy infrastructure.

Limitations:

• There are daily/monthly usage caps, so it’s not for production apps or heavy use.

• Some newer models might require joining a waitlist2.

• The API experience isn’t exactly the same as paying for the official service, but it’s still really powerful for most dev/test use cases.

Hope this helps someone out! If you’ve tried it or have tips for cool projects to build with these free APIs, drop a reply!

Hi Guys,

let's grow this thread.

Here we should accumulate all good and recommend options and the thread should serve as a reliable source for getting surprising good FREE API Options shown.

I'll start!:

I recommend using the Openrouter API Key with the unlimited and not rate limited Deepseek/Deepseek R1 0528 - free model.

It's intelligent, strong reasoning and it's good at coding but sometimes it sucks a bit.
I Roocode there is a High Reasoning mode maybe it makes things better.

In Windsurf you can use SWE-1 for free which is a good and reliable option for tool use and coding but it misses something apart from the big guns.

In TRAE you can get nearly unlimited access to Claude 4 Sonnet and other Highend Models for just 3$ a month! Thats my option right now.

And... there is a tool which can import your OpenAI-Session Cookie and can work as a local reverse proxy to make the requests from your Plus Subscription work as API request in your Coding IDE ..thats sick right?

How do I get free ai API keys to use for my projects as a startup

Hello everyone I am looking for APIs of any AI to integrate them into your code or to "Aider" thank you in advance