OpenRouter

Free tier access to multiple open-source LLM models with shared quota

OpenRouter provides free access to various open-source models with a shared quota system.

Overview

OpenRouter offers a generous free tier that allows you to access multiple state-of-the-art open-source language models through a single API endpoint.

Rate Limits

All models share a common quota on the free tier.

Limit Type	Free Tier	With $10 Lifetime Top-up
Requests per minute	20	20
Requests per day	50	Up to 1,000

Full rate limit documentation

Available Models

OpenRouter provides free access to the following models:

Featured Models

• Gemma 3 12B Instruct - View model
• Gemma 3 27B Instruct - View model
• Gemma 3 4B Instruct - View model
• Hermes 3 Llama 3.1 405B - View model
• Llama 3.2 3B Instruct - View model
• Llama 3.3 70B Instruct - View model
• Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct - View model

Additional Free Models

• arcee-ai/trinity-large-preview:free
• arcee-ai/trinity-mini:free
• cognitivecomputations/dolphin-mistral-24b-venice-edition:free
• google/gemma-3n-e2b-it:free
• google/gemma-3n-e4b-it:free
• liquid/lfm-2.5-1.2b-instruct:free
• liquid/lfm-2.5-1.2b-thinking:free
• nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-30b-a3b:free
• nvidia/nemotron-nano-12b-v2-vl:free
• nvidia/nemotron-nano-9b-v2:free
• openai/gpt-oss-120b:free
• openai/gpt-oss-20b:free
• qwen/qwen3-4b:free
• qwen/qwen3-coder:free
• qwen/qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct:free
• stepfun/step-3.5-flash:free
• z-ai/glm-4.5-air:free

API Usage

Python

import openai

client = openai.OpenAI(
    base_url="https://openrouter.ai/api/v1",
    api_key="YOUR_OPENROUTER_API_KEY"
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct:free",
    messages=[
        {"role": "user", "content": "Hello, how are you?"}
    ]
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

Getting Started

1. Create an Account

   Sign up at OpenRouter

2. Get API Key

   Navigate to your dashboard and generate an API key

3. Start Making Requests

   Use the API key with the OpenAI-compatible endpoint

Additional Resources

OpenRouter Documentation

Official API documentation

Model Catalog

Browse all available models