Almost everything is free, and some offer insane discounts. You can run nearly every major AI model at $0.
Nobody actually wants to pay $20/mo for Claude, ChatGPT etc.. On top of that, plenty of people spend $200/mo on a single model.
And most people do it on autopilot - never checking what's free.
Stack those subs up and you're burning $10,000+ a year - for inference you could be pulling for $0.
I put every legit way to get AI subs Free (or absurdly discounted) in one place.
Free Tiers - no card, no expiry
1. Google AI Studio
Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemini 3 Flash, Gemma 3. 1,500 req/day, 1M context, multimodal - no card.
The most generous frontier access on the planet right now.
Google AI Studio: free access plan
2. Groq
Llama 3.3 70B, Qwen, DeepSeek. ~6k tokens/min on LPU hardware at 300+ tokens/sec.
Nothing else comes close on latency - perfect for agents.
3. Cerebras
Llama 3.1 70B, Llama 3.3 70B. 1M tokens PER DAY at up to 2,000 tokens/sec.
Highest raw daily volume on the market.
4. NVIDIA NIM
120+ open models: DeepSeek R1, V3, Llama, Qwen - no card, only phone verification.
120 models for a year, FREE.
These models can be easily connected to Hermes
5. OpenRouter
30+ FREE models through one API key. 50 req/day.
Best router when one provider isn't enough.
6. GitHub Models
GPT-5, GPT-4.1, GPT-4o, o4-mini, Llama. Limits tied to your Copilot tier.
The only legal way to touch frontier OpenAI models without a credit card.
A catalog and playground of AI models to help you build AI features and products.
7. Mistral La Plateforme
8. Cloudflare Workers AI
9. Cohere
Honest limitation: free tiers almost always mean your prompts go into training data. Keep production user data OFF these endpoints. That's exactly what the paid tier is buying you - privacy.
Instant Trial Credits - sign up & get money
10. OpenAI - $5 in credits on signup.
11. Anthropic - $5 in credits on signup.
12. xAI Grok - $25 + $150/mo recurring via data-sharing program.
13. Together AI - up to $100.
14. Mistral - trial credits on signup.
15. SambaNova - $5, 30-day expiry.
Builder & Startup Programs
**16. OpenAI Codex for Open Source
**
~$1,200 (6 months of ChatGPT Pro + Codex). Hobby projects qualify.
Easiest $1,200 you'll ever claim if you have ANY GitHub activity.
All you need to do is register your GitHub repository
17. Anthropic Startup Program$1k to $100k in Claude credits.
No VC required for entry tier.
**18. OpenAI Startup / Grove / Ramp
**
Up to 50k+. Some routes need a VC, others don't.
19. Google for Startups - AI-First
Up to $350,000 in Cloud + Vertex AI credits.
The biggest single bag in the entire AI credit space.
20. NVIDIA Inception
DGX Cloud + NIM API credits.
21. Mistral / Together / Deepgram / AssemblyAI / Runway / ElevenLabs
$5k–$50k each. Stackable.
Full pool: 400k+
Apply to all of them - they don't talk to each other.
22. AWS Activate
$5k–$100k
Infra credits, not inference.
23. Microsoft for Startups$25k–$150k in Azure.
Also infra, also stacks.
Student Programs
These programs are one of the best and easiest ways for students to get a subscription completely free.
24. OpenAI Codex for Students - $100 in credits
US/Canada students and .edu mail
25. Cursor Pro - 1 year free, worth $240.
26. Claude Pro - 50% off, $10/mo.
27. GitHub Copilot - free via GitHub Education.
28. GitHub Student Pack - 100+ tools bundled.
29. JetBrains IDEs - free (IntelliJ, PyCharm, WebStorm, all of them).
30. Replit Pro - free via GitHub Pack.
31. Perplexity Pro - 1 year free with .edu.
32. AWS Educate - Bedrock + Claude access.
33. Google Cloud for Education - credits + Vertex AI.
34. Microsoft Imagine - Azure + AI tools.
Subscription Discounts - Cursor, ChatGPT, Claude
The section nobody else writes properly. The paid subs you actually use day to day have discount paths most people miss.
35. Cursor Pro
- 1 year FREE for students. Worth $240.
- Go to cursor(.)com/students. SheerID verification with .edu.
- Full Pro plan - $20/mo in model credits, extended Agent limits, frontier models (Claude, GPT, Gemini). Auto-renews at $20/mo after the year - set a calendar reminder.
For non-students: 14-day Pro trial, 50% off first month via referral codes, partial access through GitHub Student Pack.
The best deal in dev tooling right now.
Many students pay for a subscription without realizing it
36. ChatGPT Plus / Pro
Worst news in this article. OpenAI's free Plus promo for US/Canada students ended in May 2025 and hasn't returned.
No public ChatGPT student discount as of June 2026.
Your options: wait for back-to-school season (Aug–Sep promos), apply for Codex for Open Source ($1,200), use the free tier hard, hit GPT-5 through GitHub Models for $0.
**37. Claude Pro
**
- 50% off for verified students - $10/mo instead of $20
- Go to claude(.)ai/students. SheerID verification with .edu. Discount applies automatically. Works in US + select international markets.
For non-students: annual billing saves 15% ($17/mo effective), Claude for Education if your university has it institutionally, or Anthropic Startup Program if you're building.
The single best frontier-model deal on the market right now.
The Claude Code Hack - Bonus
Anthropic doesn't run a permanent free Claude API tier.
But, Claude Code is open - point it at any OpenAI-compatible backend with one env var.
1export ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL=https://api.groq.com/openai/v12export ANTHROPIC_API_KEY=your_groq_key
Now you're running Claude Code on Llama 3.3 70B at 300 tokens/sec.
Works with NVIDIA NIM, OpenRouter, Groq, Cerebras.
Conclusion
If you're paying $200/mo for AI tools before you've maxed out the free side - you're funding someone else's marketing budget.
Stay tuned & Good luck :)
Don't forget to follow me.
