Comprehensive analysis of every free AI model. Compare scores, capabilities, and context windows across 46 free models from 23 providers.
Free Models
46
Providers
23
Best Free Model
Gemma 4 31B (free)
Score: 80
Beats Paid Models
85%
224 paid models beaten
All 46 free models ranked by composite score.
How do free models stack up against paid alternatives across key metrics?
Avg Score
Free
30
Paid
54
Avg Context
Free
281K
Paid
418K
With Reasoning
Free
48%
Paid
60%
With Vision
Free
15%
Paid
53%
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) | 80 | |
| 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 |
| Cohere | 1 | North Mini Code (free) | 40 |
| NVIDIA | 7 | Nemotron 3.5 Content Safety (free) | 40 |
| poolside | 2 | Laguna XS.2 (free) | 40 |
| Liquid AI | 2 | LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking (free) | 40 |
| Windsurf | 1 | SWE-1.5 | 40 |
| HUMAIN | 3 | ALLaM 2 7B Instruct | 40 |
| TII | 7 | Falcon-H1-Arabic 34B Instruct | 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 | -- |
| MiniMax | 1 | MiniMax Video-01 | -- |
| Luma AI | 1 | Luma Dream Machine | -- |
| Stability AI | 1 | Stable Video Diffusion | -- |
| Wan AI | 1 | Wan 2.1 T2V | -- |
| Lightricks | 1 | LTX-Video 2 | -- |
| Vercel | 1 | autofixer-01 | -- |
| JetBrains | 1 | Mellum | -- |
Full feature grid across all 46 free models and 7 capabilities.
Vision
7
15%
Reasoning
22
48%
JSON Mode
10
22%
Function Calling
24
52%
Streaming
35
76%
Web Search
0
0%
Image Output
3
7%
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 80 out of 100. Paid models average 54. 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 281K.
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.