FreeLLMAPI takes a different approach: instead of one hosted free pool, it routes across every provider's free tier at once — Google, Groq, Cerebras, NVIDIA, Cloudflare, Mistral, Cohere, Z.ai and more — so your effective free ceiling is the sum of all of them, not a single 50/day cap. It's open source, runs on your own machine, and keeps your provider keys local.
| FreeLLMAPI | OpenRouter (free) | |
|---|---|---|
| Cost of the router | Free, open source, self-hosted | Free to use; hosted service |
| Where your keys live | On your machine (self-hosted) | On OpenRouter's servers |
| Scope | Only genuinely free tiers | Free + paid models |
| Free daily limit | Sum of every provider's free tier | 50/day (1,000/day after $10 spend) |
| Catalog freshness | Live catalog, synced twice a day | Model list updates, no free-tracking |
| Failover across providers | Yes, built in | Within OpenRouter only |
| Credit card | Never required | Not required for free pool |
Why people switch
- No hard daily cap — each provider's free tier adds to your total, and the router fails over when one runs dry.
- Keys stay private — self-hosted, so your provider keys never leave your machine.
- Only free tiers — no surprise charges; every model in the catalog is $0.
- Live catalog — free-tier availability changes weekly; FreeLLMAPI tracks it for you.
Use every one of these through one key. FreeLLMAPI is an open-source, self-hosted router that puts all these free tiers behind a single OpenAI-compatible endpoint and fails over when one is rate-limited. Browse the catalog or go live.
See the full comparison → · Free models removed from OpenRouter? · Best free LLM APIs 2026