# Cerebras API free tier

New Cerebras accounts receive $5 in free credits after adding a verified payment method; the credits expire 30 days after they are granted, and Playground and API access stay inactive until a payment method is added. Free Trial limits per model are 5 requests a minute, 30,000 uncached and 90,000 total tokens a minute, and 1,000,000 tokens an hour and a day.

Read from the provider page 2026-09-14.

## Signup credit: Cerebras Inference API, Free Trial tier

Published on the provider page.

- Free credit: $5 — Granted after a verified payment method is added; expires after 30 days
- Requests per minute (gpt-oss-120b): 5 — Free Trial tier
- Input tokens per minute (gpt-oss-120b): 30,000 — Uncached tokens a minute, Free Trial tier
- Tokens per minute (gpt-oss-120b): 90,000 — Total tokens a minute, Free Trial tier
- Tokens per hour (gpt-oss-120b): 1,000,000 — Free Trial tier
- Tokens per day (gpt-oss-120b): 1,000,000 — Free Trial tier
- Requests per minute (qwen-3.8-27b): 5 — Free Trial tier
- Tokens per minute (qwen-3.8-27b): 90,000 — Total tokens a minute, Free Trial tier
- Tokens per day (qwen-3.8-27b): 1,000,000 — Free Trial tier

- What moves you past this tier: The first credit purchase (Pay as You Go) moves the account to the Developer tier: on gpt-oss-120b, 1,000 requests a minute with 1,000,000 uncached and 3,000,000 total tokens a minute, and no hourly or daily caps.
- Card required: Yes
- Source: [Cerebras rate limits](https://inference-docs.cerebras.ai/support/rate-limits), read 2026-09-14

## Related

- [Cerebras speed, and what it does not decide](https://benchlm.ai/blog/posts/cerebras-won-speed-not-the-shortlist)
- [Compare paid LLM API rates](https://benchlm.ai/llm-pricing)
- [All free tiers](https://benchlm.ai/free-tier)

## FAQ

### Does Cerebras give free API credits?

Yes, with a condition. New accounts receive $5 in free credits after adding a verified payment method, and the credits expire 30 days after they are granted. Until a payment method is added, Cerebras says Playground and API access remain inactive, so the free credit is not usable without a card.

### What are the Cerebras Free Trial rate limits?

Per model, 5 requests a minute, 30,000 uncached and 90,000 total tokens a minute, 1,000,000 tokens an hour and 1,000,000 tokens a day, listed for gpt-oss-120b and Qwen 3.8 27B on the rate-limits page. The hourly and daily caps are what the Developer tier removes.

### How do I get higher Cerebras limits?

Buy credits (Pay as You Go) from the Billing tab in the Cloud Console. The first purchase moves the account to the Developer tier, which for gpt-oss-120b means 1,000 requests a minute with 1,000,000 uncached and 3,000,000 total tokens a minute and no hourly or daily restrictions.

Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/free-tier/cerebras