OpenRouter free models
Models whose ID ends in :free cost nothing per token and are limited per account: 20 requests per minute, and 50 requests per day until the account has bought 10 credits in its lifetime, after which the daily limit is 1,000. The higher daily ceiling is granted from 9 credits purchased to absorb rounding and top-up fees, and a negative balance returns 402 even on free models.
Free tier: OpenRouter API, models with the :free suffix
Published on the provider page| Limit | Value | Applies to | Note |
|---|---|---|---|
| Requests per minute | 20 | Account | Free-model variants, regardless of purchase history |
| Requests per day | 50 | Account | Accounts with under 10 credits purchased all time |
| Requests per day | 1,000 | Account | Accounts that have purchased at least 10 credits at any point |
- What moves you past this tier
- Buying 10 credits once raises the daily free-model limit from 50 to 1,000; paid model variants have no platform-level request cap and bill per token.
- Card required
- No
- Source
- OpenRouter API limits Read 2026-10-16
What OpenRouter charges after the free tier
OpenRouter publishes per-token prices for 422 text models. The highest-scoring ones are below, per million tokens, read from its own pages on October 20, 2026.
- Claude Opus 5$5.00 in · $25.00 out
- GPT-6 Astra$10.00 in · $50.00 out
- Claude Fable 5$10.00 in · $50.00 out
- Claude Sonnet 5.5$2.00 in · $10.00 out
- GPT-6.1 Sol$2.00 in · $10.00 out
17 free models on OpenRouter on October 20, 2026
These IDs end in :free, cost nothing per token and count against the request limits above. The list changes often, so check the catalog before you build on one.
- cohere/north-mini-code:free · 256K context
- dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:free · 512K context
- google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it:free · 262K context
- google/gemma-4-31b-it:free · 262K context
- liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free · 66K context
- minimax/minimax-m3.1-flash:free · 1M context
- nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-omni-30b-a3b-reasoning:free · 256K context
- nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b:free · 262K context
- nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free · 1M context
- nvidia/nemotron-3.5-content-safety:free · 128K context
- nvidia/nemotron-3.5-lightning:free · 1M context
- nvidia/nemotron-3.5-super-vl:free · 1M context
- poolside/laguna-s-2.1:free · 262K context
- poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free · 262K context
- thinkingmachines/inkling-small:free · 1.05M context
- thinkingmachines/inkling:free · 1.05M context
- xingchen-agi/xing4.0-29b-a4b:free · 262K context
Questions
Is OpenRouter free?
Models whose ID ends in :free cost nothing per token. They are rate-limited per account: 20 requests a minute, and 50 requests a day until the account has purchased $10 of credits at any point, after which the daily limit is 1,000. Paid models bill per token from a prepaid balance.
How many free requests does OpenRouter allow per day?
Fifty a day on free models for accounts that have never bought $10 of credits, and 1,000 a day once they have. The 20-requests-a-minute limit applies either way. The limits are enforced per account across every key, so extra accounts or keys do not add capacity.
What happens with a negative OpenRouter balance?
Requests return HTTP 402 Payment Required, even on free models, until the balance is positive again. Keeping a small positive balance is part of using the free variants, and buying $10 of credits once is also what unlocks the 1,000-requests-a-day allowance on them.