2026 Free & Low-Cost LLM Ultimate Guide: A Complete Roundup of Domestic and International Options

Xiaomi gives away 16 billion tokens, Mistral offers 1 billion, DeepSeek costs just pennies a day…

The 2026 large model market is fiercely competitive, with so many free and low-cost options that it’s hard to keep up. Today, we’ll clear up the landscape of free + low-cost large models both domestically and internationally, so you can choose according to your needs.

I. Domestic · Free

1. Xiaomi MiMo 100T

Xiaomi is directly gifting Tokens. Skipping this deal would be a mistake:

✓ Quota: Apply for a free Token Plan or credits, up to 16 billion Tokens

✓ Model: MiMo V2.5 (Flagship reasoning + Multimodal + Text-to-Speech)

✓ Duration: April 28, 2026 - May 28, 2026 (Only 22 days left!)

✓ Registration URL: https://100t.xiaomimimo.com

✓ Platform: https://platform.xiaomimimo.com

Process: Fill out the application form → Wait 3 days for assessment → Email notification → Credits arrive within 24 hours

Suitable For: Programming assistance, multimodal applications, text-to-speech

One-Line Verdict: Xiaomi is essentially throwing money to build their ecosystem. If it’s free, take it.

2. Alibaba Cloud Bailian (New User Benefits)

New users of the Qwen series get free quotas:

• ✓ Models: qwen3.6-max-preview, qwen3.6-flash

• ✓ Free Quota: New users get 1 million Tokens each (valid for 90 days)

• ✓ Registration URL: https://bailian.console.aliyun.com

Suitable For: Chinese dialogue, content creation, programming assistance

One-Line Verdict: Alibaba Cloud’s benefits are worth grabbing.

3. SiliconFlow (Some Models Free)

A domestic aggregation platform with some models completely free:

• ✓ Models: DeepSeek-V3, Qwen2.5 full series, Llama 3.3, etc.

• ✓ Free Quota: Some models are completely free to call

• ✓ Registration URL: https://cloud.siliconflow.cn

Suitable For: Domestic users, scenarios requiring low latency

One-Line Verdict: The happy home for domestic users looking for free models.

4. Zhipu AI (GLM-4-Flash Free)

Tsinghua-affiliated large models; the Flash version is free:

• ✓ Models: GLM-4-Flash (Free), GLM-4-Air

• ✓ Free Quota: The Flash version is extremely low-cost, with bonuses for new users

• ✓ Registration URL: https://open.bigmodel.cn

Suitable For: Chinese content creation, Chinese dialogue

One-Line Verdict: The king of affordable alternatives for Chinese scenarios.

II. Domestic · Low-Cost

5. DeepSeek V4 (The Pride of Domestic AI)

It has updated to V4, and the price remains impressive:

• ✓ Models: deepseek-v4-flash, deepseek-v4-pro

• ✓ Price: Input 1 CNY / 1M tokens, Output 2 CNY / 1M tokens

• ✓ Features: Strong reasoning capabilities, good open-source ecosystem, compatible with OpenAI/Anthropic formats

• ✓ Registration URL: https://platform.deepseek.com

• ✓ Note: Old deepseek-chat and deepseek-reasoner will be sunset on July 24, 2026

Actual Cost: Writing tens of thousands of lines of code in a day might cost just a few cents.

One-Line Verdict: At this price, you can’t even buy a bottle of water for a full day’s usage.

6. MiniMax M2.7 (The All-Modal Contender)

Subscription-based, covering text + audio + video + image + music:

• ✓ Pay-As-You-Go: Input 2.1 CNY / 1M tokens, Output 8.4 CNY / 1M tokens

• ✓ Token Plan: After subscribing, billing is based on request count, with a 5-hour rolling reset

• ✓ Features: Full-modal capabilities, suitable for multimodal applications

• ✓ Registration URL: https://platform.minimaxi.com

Suitable For: Multimodal applications, text-to-speech, video generation

One-Line Verdict: One subscription covers all modalities.

7. Alibaba Qwen (Pay-As-You-Go is Also Cheap)

The pay-as-you-go version on Alibaba Cloud Bailian:

• ✓ Models: qwen3-max, qwen3.6-plus

• ✓ Price: Input 2.5 CNY / 1M tokens, Output 10 CNY / 1M tokens

• ✓ Features: Strong Chinese language capabilities, supports thinking mode

• ✓ Registration URL: https://bailian.console.aliyun.com

Suitable For: Chinese dialogue, content creation, programming assistance

One-Line Verdict: Alibaba Cloud’s offerings are cheap and abundant.

III. International · Free

8. Mistral (1 Billion Tokens/Month!)

The free quota from French AI company Mistral is arguably the most generous in the industry:

• ✓ Models: All Mistral series models (including closed-source ones)

• ✓ Free Quota: 1 billion tokens/month

• ✓ Limits: 1 request/second, 500K tokens/min

• ✓ Registration URL: https://console.mistral.ai

• ✓ Requirements: Phone number verification required

Suitable For: Heavy usage, programming assistance, multilingual tasks

One-Line Verdict: 1 billion free tokens? Not taking this deal would be a crime against yourself.

9. Google AI Studio (Gemini Free Tier)

Google’s free tier has been consistently reliable:

• ✓ Models: Gemini 3 Flash, Gemini 2.5 Flash, Gemma series

• ✓ Free Quota: 250K tokens/min, 20 requests/day

• ✓ Features: Multimodal support (text + images + audio), strong reasoning capabilities

• ✓ Registration URL: https://aistudio.google.com/apikey

Suitable For: Daily dialogue, lightweight programming, content understanding

One-Line Verdict: Google’s free offerings are too good to ignore.

10. Groq (The King of Speed)

Groq uses its proprietary LPU chips, making inference speeds ridiculously fast:

• ✓ Models: Llama 4 Scout, GPT-OSS-120B, Llama 3.3 70B

• ✓ Free Quota: Llama 4 Scout gets 1,000 requests/day, 30K tokens/min

• ✓ Features: Response speed is 5-10x faster than standard GPUs

• ✓ Registration URL: https://console.groq.com

Suitable For: Applications requiring fast responses, real-time dialogue

One-Line Verdict: It’s genuinely fast, and genuinely free.

11. Cerebras (Free Inference for GPT-OSS-120B)

Cerebras provides free inference for OpenAI’s open-source models:

• ✓ Models: GPT-OSS-120B (OpenAI’s open-source 120-billion-parameter model)

• ✓ Free Quota: 30 req/min, 60K tokens/min

• ✓ Registration URL: https://cloud.cerebras.ai

Suitable For: Scenarios requiring strong reasoning capabilities

One-Line Verdict: OpenAI’s open-source model + Cerebras acceleration = Free GPT-level experience.

12. OpenRouter (30+ Free Models)

One API key to access dozens of free models:

• ✓ Models: 30+ free models (with :free suffix)

• ✓ Popular Free Models: ✓ Gemma 4 31B / Gemma 3 series ✓ Llama 3.3 70B / Llama 3.2 3B ✓ OpenAI GPT-OSS-120B ✓ MiniMax M2.5 ✓ Qwen3 Coder ✓ GLM-4.5 Air ✓ NVIDIA Nemotron series

• ✓ Free Quota: 50 requests/day, 1,000 requests/day (after adding $10)

• ✓ Registration URL: https://openrouter.ai

Suitable For: Comparing different model performances, needing flexible switching

One-Line Verdict: The “Pinduoduo” of the model world—has everything.

13. NVIDIA NIM

Free inference services provided by NVIDIA:

• ✓ Models: Various open-source models

• ✓ Free Quota: 40 req/min

• ✓ Registration URL: https://build.nvidia.com

IV. International · Low-Cost

14. OpenAI GPT-OSS Series

OpenAI’s open-source models, available for free or low cost via various platforms:

• ✓ Models: GPT-OSS-120B, GPT-OSS-20B

• ✓ Free Channels: Free quotas available on Cerebras, Groq, OpenRouter

• ✓ Low-Cost Channels: Pay-as-you-go pricing on various cloud platforms

Suitable For: Needing GPT-level capabilities but with a limited budget

One-Line Verdict: OpenAI finally went open-source. A victory for the free-tier users.

15. OpenRouter (Low-Cost Switching Across Multiple Models)

One API key to switch between dozens of models, with many low-cost options:

• ✓ Models: Various open-source and closed-source models

• ✓ Price: Varies by model, many are below 1 CNY / 1M tokens

• ✓ Features: Unified interface, super convenient to switch models

• ✓ Registration URL: https://openrouter.ai

Suitable For: Comparing different model performances, needing flexible switching

One-Line Verdict: The “Pinduoduo” of the model world—has everything.

Important Notes

• 1. Grab Time-Limited Offers Quickly: Xiaomi MiMo 100T ends on May 28; once it’s gone, it’s gone.

• 2. Free ≠ Unlimited: Most free tiers have rate limits; be cautious for commercial use.

• 3. API Key Security: Never commit your keys to GitHub. Learn from others’ painful lessons.

• 4. Data Privacy: Data from free tiers on some platforms may be used for training.

• 5. Prices May Change: The price war for large models is intense. What’s cheap today might be even cheaper tomorrow.