A snapshot of genuinely free (or free-tier) AI tools, APIs, and platforms as they existed in May 2026.
Free tiers change fast — tools get paywalled, rebranded, or shut down. This list captures what was on offer at the time of each update, with changes tracked in history.csv. Think of it less as a permanent directory and more as a dated edition: accurate when written, audited on refresh.
63 resources across 13 categories. Browse the web view for a filterable, searchable UI, or read on.
- LLM Chatbots
- LLM APIs
- Code Assistants
- Code & UI Builders
- Image Generation
- Video Generation
- Audio & Voice
- Music Generation
- Local & Self-hosted
- Search & Research
- Productivity
- Agent Frameworks
- Contributing
Full-featured AI chat interfaces with free tiers.
- Claude — Anthropic's assistant; strong reasoning and long context. Free tier with usage limits.
- ChatGPT — OpenAI's flagship assistant with image understanding. Free tier (GPT-4o limited).
- Gemini — Google's multimodal AI assistant with Search integration. Free tier available.
- Le Chat — Mistral's assistant with built-in web search and image generation. Free with daily limits; no credit card required.
- DeepSeek — Strong reasoning and coding from DeepSeek's open-weight models. Free with usage limits. No signup required.
Programmatic access to large language models with free quotas.
- Google AI Studio — Gemini API with a generous free quota for prototyping. Free API key with rate limits.
- Groq — Blazing-fast inference for open models (Llama, Mistral, Gemma). Free tier with rate limits.
- Together AI — Serverless inference for 100+ open-source models. $5 free credit on signup.
- Mistral AI (La Plateforme) — Access to Mistral's model family via API. Free tier available.
- Cohere — NLP-focused models for generation and embeddings; good for RAG. Trial API key available.
- Hugging Face Inference API — Serverless inference for thousands of public models. Free with rate limits.
- OpenRouter — Unified API that routes to many models; several permanently free models. Some models free indefinitely.
- Cerebras — Ultra-fast inference for Llama 4 and Qwen via custom silicon. 1M tokens/day free, no credit card.
AI tools that live in your editor or terminal.
- GitHub Copilot — In-editor completions and chat across all major IDEs. Free for all users: 2,000 completions + 50 chats/month.
- Windsurf — AI-native editor with agentic "Cascade" feature (formerly Codeium). Free tier: unlimited autocomplete + 25 prompt credits/month.
- Cursor — AI-first code editor built on VS Code. Free tier available.
- Continue — Open-source AI assistant for VS Code and JetBrains; bring your own model. Completely free.
- Aider — AI pair programming in the terminal with git integration. Completely free (bring your own API key).
- Gemini CLI — Google's open-source terminal agent with 1M token context and Search grounding. 1,000 requests/day free with a Google account.
- Amazon Q Developer — AWS's coding assistant with inline suggestions and agentic tasks in VS Code / JetBrains. Free tier: unlimited completions + 50 agentic tasks/month.
Generate full UIs and apps from a prompt in the browser.
- v0 by Vercel — Generate React and Tailwind UI components from text. Free tier available.
- Bolt.new — Full-stack AI app builder that deploys instantly. Free tier available.
Text-to-image tools that are free or have a meaningful free tier.
- Stable Diffusion (via DiffusionBee) — Run Stable Diffusion locally on Mac, fully offline. Completely free.
- Ideogram — Text-to-image with unusually strong text rendering and typography. Free tier available.
- Playground AI — Image generation and editing with multiple model options. Free tier available.
- Microsoft Designer — AI image generation powered by DALL-E, integrated with Office. Free tier available.
- Adobe Firefly — Adobe's generative image tools, trained on licensed content. Free credits monthly.
- Canva AI — AI image generation and editing inside Canva's design suite. Free tier with AI features.
AI tools for generating or editing video.
- Runway — AI video generation and editing; Gen-3 Alpha model. Free tier with limited credits.
- Kling AI — High-quality text-to-video and image-to-video from Kuaishou. 66 credits/day free (watermarked outputs).
- Pika — Text-to-video and image animation with fine-grained controls. Free plan with monthly credits.
- CapCut — AI-assisted video editing with auto-captions, background removal, and effects. Free tier available.
- Descript — Edit video and audio by editing the transcript. Free tier available.
Text-to-speech, voice cloning, and speech recognition.
- ElevenLabs — High-quality TTS and voice cloning in 30+ languages. Free tier: 10,000 characters/month.
- Whisper — OpenAI's open-source speech recognition model; run locally. Completely free.
Generate original music from text prompts.
- Suno — Full songs with vocals from a text prompt. Free tier available.
- Udio — Music generation and remixing with style controls. Free tier available.
Run models on your own hardware — no API keys, no data leaving your machine.
- Ollama — Run Llama, Mistral, Gemma, and more with a single CLI command. Completely free.
- LM Studio — Desktop app to browse, download, and run local models with an OpenAI-compatible server. Completely free.
- Jan — Offline-first AI assistant with a clean UI and local model support. Completely free.
- GPT4All — Runs quantized models on CPU or GPU; no internet needed. Completely free.
AI-powered search engines and research tools.
- Perplexity AI — Search engine that cites its sources. Free tier available. No signup required.
- NotebookLM — Upload your own documents; Google's AI answers questions about them. Completely free.
- Phind — Developer-focused search with code-aware answers. Free. No signup required.
- You.com — Conversational AI search with a customisable interface. Free. No signup required.
AI tools for writing, notes, diagrams, and presentations.
- Gamma — Generate presentations and documents from a prompt. Free tier available.
- Napkin AI — Paste text and get auto-generated visuals and diagrams. Free tier available.
- Notion AI — AI writing and summarisation inside Notion. Free trial; paid Notion plan required after.
Open-source libraries for building single and multi-agent LLM systems. All are free to use — costs come only from the models you connect.
- LangChain — Provider-agnostic chains and agents; includes LangGraph for stateful, graph-based multi-agent workflows. Completely free.
- CrewAI — Role-based multi-agent framework: define a crew of agents with distinct roles, goals, and backstories. Lowest barrier to entry of any major framework, 5M+ monthly downloads. Completely free.
- AutoGen — Microsoft's conversational multi-agent framework with the richest set of agent conversation patterns. Completely free.
- MetaGPT 🇨🇳 — Maps a full software-team to LLM agents following structured SOPs: PM, architect, engineer, QA. Produces requirements docs, diagrams, code, and tests. Completely free.
- AgentScope 🇨🇳 — Alibaba's production-ready multi-agent framework with a visual Studio UI for debugging and distributed execution support. Completely free.
The list is driven by resources.csv — edit that file to add or change entries.
Quick add via CLI:
python3 update.pyManual CSV edit — append a row with these columns:
name, category, url, description, free_tier, requires_signup, tags
Criteria for inclusion:
- Has a genuine free tier (no credit card required to start, unless noted)
- Publicly accessible — not waitlisted or invite-only
- Active and functional product
- AI is a core part of the product, not a minor feature
All changes are logged automatically to history.csv.
Automated refresh: Open a Claude Code session here and paste refresh_prompt.md to have Claude research new tools and update the list.