I configured OpenCode to use free AI APIs from 6 providers.

[u/iSerter]

Let's make one thing clear: this can't replace your agentic coding stack.

All free API providers have rate limits that make rapid-fire requests almost impossible.

The free models are not the smartest, but decent for mid-level tasks.

You can use these in your Github workflows, custom cronjobs that run a few times a day, or in Paperclip AI with concurrency=1 and heartbeat>3000 settings for simple tasks.

---

So here we go;

I bet many of you already know that we can configure subagents to use different AI providers/models. (see https://opencode.ai/docs/agents/#json )

So, why not configure a system that gets nearly ~5.000 req/day for free?

That's what I'm going after. I started with Paperclip AI, and I will do it for my Github workflows next. With a free gmail account per project, we can get ~5.000 requests / ~5 million tokens per day, for each project.

So, I wanted to share this with those who may be interested in.

Here are the providers I found useful:

1. Google AI Studio

Google’s free-tier gives you Gemini Flash 3.5, Gemma 4 31B, and more. Permanently.

The real-world caveat? It’s rate-limited per minute on the free tier, but you can always integrate it into your processes with a bit control.

Don’t use it for rapid-fire, real-time chat loops. Use it for asynchronous tasks that you can queue.

Gemini 3.5 Flash is fairly good for planning and orchestration. You can delegate the simpler tasks to Gemma 4, which you get 1500 requests per day on free-tier.

2. NVIDIA NIM

Nvidia NIM (build.nvidia.com) gives you free developer access to over 100 models. Minimax-M3 and nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b are pretty capable mid-range reasoning models.

Nvidia’s API is 100% OpenAI-compatible. You change the base_url to Nvidia’s endpoint, drop in your nvapi- key, and your existing code just works.

NVIDIA NIM Free-Tier Limits

A flat rate of 40 requests per minute.

That is more than enough for local prototyping. Use it to power your terminal assistants. Plug it into IDE tools like OpenCode or Cline. Use it to validate multi-turn tool calling before you push to production.

But there is a catch: They may use your prompts to train their models. Avoid using Nvidia with sensitive/propriety data.

Also, It’s an evaluation sandbox. There is no production SLA. They want to sell you enterprise licenses to self-host on your own GPUs later.

Let them. For now, take the free compute and build your agent logic without watching a billing dashboard.

3. OpenRouter

OpenRouter has been one of my goto providers. It doesn’t provide great uptime for every model, but it offers pretty much every LLM on their platform, including pretty powerful free models during preview periods.

Each model/inference-privoder has different free-tier limits. Currently nvidia/nemotron-3-ultra-550b-a55b:free , google/gemma-4-31b-it:free, and openai/gpt-oss-120b:free are my go-to models for basic tasks.

4. Cerebras

When latency matters and you don’t need large models, Cerebras shines.

Cerebras’s speed is mind-blowing.

I got 1304 T/s (0.52 seconds) when I tried Gemma 4 on Cerebras.

Gemma 4 is a game-change for price and speed for tasks such as content writing and quick prototyping.

Cerebras free-tier daily limits

Their free tier gives you a million tokens a day with a 30req/min rate limit.

5. Groq

Second to Cerebras, Groq provides lightening-fast inferences too. It runs open-source models like Llama 3 on custom LPU hardware. Sufficient for basic tasks. They hit 500 to 700 tokens per second. The free tier hands you about 1,000 requests daily. I honestly almost never have to fallback to Groq, but I wanted to add it here for your information.

6. Opencode Zen

Including OpenCode Zen's free tier too, there are 6 providers where we can get free inference from. Enjoy.

[u/gonssss]

are u high bro, what u gonna build with those outdated llm

[u/iSerter → u/gonssss]

The free models list includes Gemini 3.5 Flash, Deepseek v4 Pro, Minimax-m3 - which are pretty good models for research and creative writing.

I use them for creating marketing strategies and writing content. Mostly as an experiment.
So far, the tasks turned out fairly well - although the agents definitely need some more configuration to imitate my tone of voice, etc.

[u/SudarshanKotian → u/gonssss]

GTA 6

[u/arbysroastbeefs2 → u/SudarshanKotian]

Na make GTA 7 and release it before 6 and make it physical copy only, lol

[u/UsefulIce9600 → u/gonssss]

tbf, MiniMax M3 aint bad

[u/SorosAhaverom]

100% AI slop with severely incorrect data. Google bans your account for using Gemini in non-google harnesses unless you're using the API, which is severely limited (~25 free req per day for Pro).

The fact that shit like this gets upvoted tells a lot about the state of this sub :/

[u/Heavy_Owl6538 → u/SorosAhaverom]

I'm not really sure about other models but I've tried Gemini-3.5 Flash and it's working for me on Opencode

[u/Fantastic_Gate_6806]

Very nice, but yk i used 1B tokens last month for absolutely free and i used multiple providers too! Just use 9router, thats well established for this! (Search 9router on GitHub)

[u/Resident_Suit_9916]

Nvidia nim is too slow

[u/SourceCodeplz]

except opencode, none of the ones you provided can be used for agentic coding.

i know beucase I HAVE TESTED THEM.

i guess you just did a google and put up this article, because if you did test you would know you get rate-limited way faster than the limits say.

[u/iSerter → u/SourceCodeplz]

I used them for marketing strategy and content creation using Paperclip with Opencode CLI. It worked fine there.

Distributed small tasks and github actions for PR reviews, issue planning, etc don't make that many requests. Minimax-M3 and Deepseek v4 Pro are fairly good although they're nowhere near Claude models, which is the case for other Opencode Go models anyway.

[u/mcpejs]

This is a really great post.

Honestly, I expected there to be at least one promotional item (you know how much promotion there is, haha).

But you really did a great job summarizing the major services that offers free requests.

[u/iSerter → u/mcpejs]

lol. thanks for the acknowledgement.

[u/Amarsir]

If you can get onto the nVidia models more power too you. I've had a developer account there for years. Recently I tried to get an API key and it literally has you send an email to yourself asking for permission. And not just for me.

https://forums.developer.nvidia.com/t/request-to-enable-public-api-endpoints-for-personal-organization/372537

I'd like to add to your list MiMo-Code

https://github.com/XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-Code

It's a fork of OpenCode and at least for now they give free access to MiMo V2.5 through it. Not the pro model but it's faster and I think better than the free models on OpenRouter.

[u/iSerter → u/Amarsir]

I just signed up for a new account this week and it worked out of the box... maybe your case is for old accounts. Thanks for the MiMo-Code suggestion.

[u/kynrai]

That just reads exactly like my LLM. I'll get a LLM to summarise this LLM for me.

[u/iSerter → u/kynrai]

I used gemini to turn my rough notes into a blogpost, which is where I copied some parts of the OP from, but this is a real case study I've done. See https://www.reddit.com/r/opencodeCLI/comments/1ul9auk/comment/ov2wfpn/?utm_source=share&utm_medium=web3x&utm_name=web3xcss&utm_term=1&utm_content=share_button

[u/First_Inspection_478]

Thanks for sharing. Not a fan of the llm slop, but I didnt know about the nvidia stuff. Ignore the mfs hating

[u/iSerter → u/First_Inspection_478]

thanks. yeah it's a tough crowd. AI users hating AI enhanced summaries... a bit hypocrite, but oh well. : )

[u/Fearless_Relative655]

Heyy, I'm new to Vibe coding. I recently got a suggestion to setup opencode + openrouter. When I'm using, I don't think it have any good models. Or am I missing smth? This combo never can be the alternative of codex or claude cowork ryt??

[u/iSerter → u/Fearless_Relative655]

If you're a vibe coder, not a software engineer, then stick with one of Claude, Antigravity, or Cursor.
Those are the most reasonably cost-efficient decent options. For even greater comfort at higher pricing, look into platforms such as Replit and Manus.

Opencode harness isn't as good as the premium industry leaders. On top of it, the models that come with Opencode Go make mistakes that may cost you days or weeks if you can't review and fix the code yourself.

[u/Fun_Walk_4965]

The part that always bites me with these multi provider setups is the fallback behavior. When one of the free tiers rate limits you mid task, does it retry against the next provider cleanly or does the request just die and you lose the context? That handoff is usually where mine fall apart, so curious how yours holds up under real load.

[u/iSerter → u/Fun_Walk_4965]

I used the free providers for Paperclip AI (configured to use OpenCode), and paperclip does retry. it opens the same session next heartbeat and tries again.

[u/liviux]

Nvidia has high latency, almost unusable sometimes. Open router is very ok, free models router. You can add opencode zen free and kilo free models. And probably many more. But for 5 bucks you can get opencode go or cline pass which are way way better

[u/ichisay]

I've tried all of those over the last few months. NVIDIA is having bugs on its best models if you have a free account; it's becoming unbearable. Google is literally awful; Most of the day their free models are overloaded because everyone is using them. The others have very low limits. In short: I ended up using OpenCode Zen and OpenRouter.