5 Free AI APIs You Can Use Today (No Credit Card Required)

#beginners #ai #webdev #api

You don't need to pay OpenAI $20/month to build AI apps. Here are 5 completely free AI APIs you can start using right now.

1. Google Gemini API

Best for: Text generation, analysis, code generation

Free tier: 15 requests/minute, 1M tokens/day
Models: Gemini 2.0 Flash (fast), Gemini Pro (powerful)
Signup: ai.google.dev

const res = await fetch(
  `https://generativelanguage.googleapis.com/v1beta/models/gemini-2.0-flash:generateContent?key=${API_KEY}`,
  {
    method: "POST",
    headers: { "Content-Type": "application/json" },
    body: JSON.stringify({
      contents: [{ parts: [{ text: "Explain quantum computing simply" }] }],
    }),
  }
);
const data = await res.json();
console.log(data.candidates[0].content.parts[0].text);

I built: MaxAI Writer and EcoSense AI entirely on Gemini's free tier.

2. Hugging Face Inference API

Best for: Specialized models (sentiment, translation, image classification)

Free tier: Rate-limited, thousands of models
Signup: huggingface.co

3. Cloudflare Workers AI

Best for: Edge inference, low latency

Free tier: 10,000 neurons/day
Models: Llama, Whisper, Stable Diffusion

4. Groq

Best for: Fastest inference speeds

Free tier: 30 RPM on Llama models
Signup: console.groq.com

5. Cohere

Best for: Enterprise-grade text analysis, RAG

Free tier: 5 RPM, trial API key

Comparison

API	Best For	Rate Limit	Signup
Google Gemini	General AI	15 RPM	Free
Hugging Face	Specialized	Varies	Free
Cloudflare AI	Edge	10K/day	Free
Groq	Speed	30 RPM	Free
Cohere	Text analysis	5 RPM	Free

Which free API are you using? Drop a comment!

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