Free Tier
Call a curated set of free models through anyrouter/free — no BYOK setup, no credit deduction, and no daily cap on any plan.
anyrouter/free is a built-in model id that routes your request to the best free model available at the moment — no provider keys, no credit deduction. There is no per-account daily cap, on any plan.
Paid models need credits. New accounts get 5 free requests on paid models. After that, a paid model returns 402 insufficient_balance. Add credits, add your own key or subscribe.
Overview
Free tier (anyrouter/free) | Paid models | BYOK | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Plan required | Any (signed in) | Any (pay per token) | Any |
| Credits deducted | No | Yes | No |
| BYOK key required | No | No | Yes |
| Daily cap | None | None | None |
| Per-minute cap | 2400 req/min per key, every plan | 600–1800 req/min by plan | 600 req/min |
Per-minute caps are maintained on the Rate Limits page and may change over time.
How it works
What it includes
- No BYOK required. You don't need to add any upstream provider keys.
- No credit deduction. Requests to
anyrouter/freedon't deduct from your credit balance — your balance is unaffected. - Automatic fallback. If the first free model is unavailable or rate-limited, AnyRouter falls back to the next candidate automatically.
No daily cap
Free-tier requests have no per-account daily cap, on any plan. anyrouter/free and all :free-suffixed models draw on the same generous limit of 2400 requests per minute per API key, the same on every plan. Free-model requests do not count toward Go's 5-hour request window.
Responses carry X-RateLimit-Tier: free-model and X-RateLimit-Limit: 2400. If you do go over, the API returns 429 rate_limit_exceeded with Retry-After set to the seconds to wait. See Rate Limits.
Making a request
Use anyrouter/free exactly like any other model id:
curl https://anyrouter.dev/api/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $ANYROUTER_API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{
"model": "anyrouter/free",
"messages": [{ "role": "user", "content": "Hello, what model am I talking to?" }]
}'The response includes the resolved model id in model, so you can see which free model served the request. You can also see it in Dashboard → Logs. See the full routing details and current candidate list at /model/anyrouter/free.
Faster first token
On streaming requests, if the first free model stays silent for about 2.5 seconds, anyrouter/free starts one more free model in parallel. The first one to send a token answers, the other is cancelled, and only one request counts. See Parallel upstreams for the response header and how to turn it off.
:free models fall back to anyrouter/free
If every route for a :free model fails, AnyRouter answers through anyrouter/free instead of returning an error. The response then carries x-anyrouter-fallback: anyrouter/free, and the model field names the free model that actually answered. Pin a different model, or check that header, if you need that exact model.
Configure
If free models aren't enough, you have four ways to grow beyond the free tier:
Top up your balance and call any paid model.
The Go plan ($2/mo) adds $4 monthly credits. Pro ($10/mo) and above add larger monthly credits and higher rate limits. See Credits & Billing for how the plan credit works.
Configure your own upstream provider keys on the BYOK page and use anyrouter/byok for unlimited routing through your own accounts. BYOK requests never deduct credits.
See Free capacity with your own keys for providers with a free tier.
Individual :free-suffixed models (for example meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b:free) share the same limits but let you pin a specific model.
Frequently asked questions
No. anyrouter/free and :free models have no daily cap on any plan. The only limit is 2400 requests per minute per API key.
Yes. The model field in the response body contains the resolved model id. You can also see it in Dashboard → Logs.
Yes. Every signed-in plan can use it with no daily cap. Paid models still need credits.