Comprehensive analysis of every free AI model. Compare scores, capabilities, and context windows across 48 free models from 25 providers.
Free Models
48
Providers
25
Best Free Model
Gemma 4 31B (free)
Score: 81
Beats Paid Models
88%
242 paid models beaten
All 48 free models ranked by composite score.
How do free models stack up against paid alternatives across key metrics?
Avg Score
Free
23
Paid
52
Avg Context
Free
193K
Paid
340K
With Reasoning
Free
50%
Paid
54%
With Vision
Free
15%
Paid
49%
The top-scoring free model for different workflows.
Which providers offer free models and how they compare.
| Provider | Free Models | Best Free Model | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| 4 | Gemma 4 31B (free) | 81 | |
| MiniMax | 2 | MiniMax M2.5 (free) | 78 |
| Zhipu AI | 1 | GLM 4.5 Air (free) | 71 |
| Alibaba | 2 | Qwen3 Next 80B A3B Instruct (free) | 67 |
| Meta | 2 | Llama 3.3 70B Instruct (free) | 66 |
| OpenAI | 3 | gpt-oss-20b (free) | 57 |
| inclusionai | 1 | Ring-2.6-1T (free) | 40 |
| Baidu | 2 | CoBuddy (free) | 40 |
| NVIDIA | 5 | Nemotron 3 Nano Omni (free) | 40 |
| poolside | 2 | Laguna XS.2 (free) | 40 |
| Liquid AI | 2 | LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking (free) | 40 |
| Midjourney | 1 | Midjourney v6.1 | -- |
| Adobe | 1 | Adobe Firefly 3 | -- |
| Leonardo AI | 1 | Leonardo Phoenix | -- |
| Runway | 1 | Runway Gen-3 Alpha | -- |
| Pika | 1 | Pika 2.0 | -- |
| Luma AI | 1 | Luma Dream Machine | -- |
| Stability AI | 1 | Stable Video Diffusion | -- |
| Wan AI | 1 | Wan 2.1 T2V | -- |
| Lightricks | 1 | LTX-Video 2 | -- |
| Windsurf | 1 | SWE-1.5 | -- |
| Vercel | 1 | autofixer-01 | -- |
| JetBrains | 1 | Mellum | -- |
| HUMAIN | 3 | ALLaM 7B Instruct (preview) | -- |
| TII | 7 | Falcon-H1-Arabic 34B Instruct | -- |
Full feature grid across all 48 free models and 7 capabilities.
Vision
7
15%
Reasoning
24
50%
JSON Mode
8
17%
Function Calling
25
52%
Streaming
37
77%
Web Search
0
0%
Image Output
3
6%
What capabilities are only available in paid models, or have very limited free options? Here is where paying makes a difference.
These capabilities are not available in any free model. You must use a paid model to access them.
These capabilities exist in a few free models but are much more common in paid options.
The best free model scores 81 out of 100. Paid models average 52. If you need consistent top-tier quality, the top paid models still lead.
Free models have a median context of 131K tokens (range: 4K - 1.0M). The average across free models is 193K.
Explore more tools for finding affordable and free AI models.
Google Gemini offers the most generous free tier with API access. OpenAI and Anthropic provide free trial credits. Many open-source models (Llama, Mistral, DeepSeek) can be run locally at no cost using tools like Ollama.
Free tiers typically limit requests per minute (RPM), tokens per day, and available models. Google Gemini allows 15 RPM on Flash models. Most providers offer $5-10 in free credits that expire after a trial period.
For low-volume applications (under 1,000 requests/day), free tiers can work. For production workloads, paid tiers offer higher rate limits, SLAs, and priority access. Self-hosted open-source models are the best free option for production.