Comprehensive analysis of every free AI model. Compare scores, capabilities, and context windows across 37 free models from 22 providers.
Free Models
37
Providers
22
Best Free Model
Nemotron 3 Super (free)
Score: 84
Beats Paid Models
84%
227 paid models beaten
All 37 free models ranked by composite score.
How do free models stack up against paid alternatives across key metrics?
Avg Score
Free
44
Paid
65
Avg Context
Free
127K
Paid
290K
With Reasoning
Free
32%
Paid
47%
With Vision
Free
14%
Paid
46%
The top-scoring free model for different workflows.
Which providers offer free models and how they compare.
| Provider | Free Models | Best Free Model | Score |
|---|---|---|---|
| NVIDIA | 4 | Nemotron 3 Super (free) | 84 |
| MiniMax | 2 | MiniMax M2.5 (free) | 83 |
| StepFun | 1 | Step 3.5 Flash (free) | 78 |
| OpenAI | 3 | gpt-oss-120b (free) | 74 |
| arcee-ai | 2 | Trinity Large Preview (free) | 73 |
| Alibaba | 3 | Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B (free) | 69 |
| 5 | Gemma 3 27B (free) | 63 | |
| Mistral AI | 1 | Mistral Small 3.1 24B (free) | 62 |
| Liquid AI | 2 | LFM2.5-1.2B-Thinking (free) | 59 |
| Windsurf | 1 | SWE-1.5 | 49 |
| Meta | 2 | Llama 3.3 70B Instruct (free) | 44 |
| Vercel | 1 | autofixer-01 | 39 |
| JetBrains | 1 | Mellum | 33 |
| 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 | -- |
Full feature grid across all 37 free models and 7 capabilities.
Vision
5
14%
Reasoning
12
32%
JSON Mode
12
32%
Function Calling
16
43%
Streaming
26
70%
Web Search
1
3%
Image Output
3
8%
What capabilities are only available in paid models, or have very limited free options? Here is where paying makes a difference.
These capabilities exist in a few free models but are much more common in paid options.
The best free model scores 84 out of 100. Paid models average 65. If you need consistent top-tier quality, the top paid models still lead.
Free models have a median context of 131K tokens (range: 8K — 262K). The average across free models is 127K.
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.