Today I discovered something pretty cool... OpenRouter has free models! And not just baby 2b models, 550b MoE from Nvidia (Nemotron 3 Ultra), along with some really cool ones I discovered along the way, like HY3 by TenCent and North Mini Code by Cohere.
This is a game changer... We all pay subscriptions, or API fees, I built V.E.L.O.C.I.T.Y. IDE to just get a cheaper alternative, using Kimi K2.7. But then I discovered, DeepSeek is shockingly cheap. You get a REALLY competent coding model for sub $1/M tokens in and out... But this... This is the real victory. V.E.L.O.C.I.T.Y. IDE still needs some polishing, but connected with a Cloudflare API key, or OpenRouter API key, it gives you access to any model you want! And that includes free ones.
I'll post an update once it's at a state where it's 'nice' to use, so you all can give it a try.
Top comments (1)
You can try OpenCode and its own model (Big Pickle—a rebranded GLM 4.6) or one of its free Zen models, like DeepSeek v4 Flash. It does 99% of what Copilot does using Haiku 4.5, and you don't even have to open your wallet.