How to use the Free Tier?

FAQ section about AI/ML API Free Tier option.

About

AIML API has two “free” modes:

1. Free (no billing method added) — you can use a small set of free models to try the platform.

2. Verified Free Tier (billing method added) — you get 50,000 free credits and access to the full model catalog for testing. Adding a billing method does not charge you automatically. You only pay when you purchase a plan.

Free access without a billing method

If you didn’t add a payment method, you can use AIML API for free with these models only:

You can use them in:

• AI Playground

• Via API (Chat Completions)

This is the easiest way to quickly test the platform without any billing setup.

Try in Playground

Verified Free Tier (billing method added)

If you add a billing method, you’ll receive 50,000 free credits to test the platform with a much wider set of models.

Important: adding a billing method does not withdraw money. Payments start only after you purchase a plan.

What you can use with free credits

Using 50,000 free credits, you can access:

• LLM models

• Image models

• TTS models

• STT models

• Moderation models

• OCR models

• Embedding models

How far do 50,000 credits go?

If you send short prompts (a few sentences) to non-image models, 50,000 credits is typically enough to try many models 1–10 times, depending on the model’s cost and workload.

Error Message

When you attempt to call the API after reaching the limit, you will receive an appropriate error. For example, if the /v1/chat/completions endpoint was called:

{
    "message": "You have exhausted the available [plan.rule:api_token] resource limit. Update your payment method to continue using the service. For more information please visit https://aimlapi.com/app/billing"
    "path": "/v1/chat/completions"
    "requestId": "798b860e-98c2-4e8e-8c50-550bcfc2eccc"
    "statusCode": "403"
    "timestamp": "2025-03-11T07:13:27.813Z"
}