Free Tier
Call a curated set of free models through anyrouter/free — no BYOK setup, no credit deduction. 10 requests/day on Free, 1000/day on paid plans.
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. The Free plan includes 10 requests per day. Paid plans (Go and up, including donation-backed Go) include 1000 requests per day.
Paid models need credits. On the Free plan, a paid model returns 402 insufficient_balance. Add credits or subscribe. The 10/day cap applies only to free-tier models (anyrouter/free and :free variants).
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 | 10 requests/day on Free / 1000 requests/day (Go, Pro, Pro+, Max) | None | None |
| Per-minute cap | 60 req/min (Go) or 240 req/min (Pro, Pro+, Max) on free-tier models | 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.
Daily cap
Free-tier requests are capped per account per day, and the counter resets at 00
UTC every day. The Free plan gets 10 requests/day. Go, Pro, Pro+, and Max get 1000 requests/day.anyrouter/free and all :free-suffixed models share this single daily pool — they don't each get their own separate limit. The cap doesn't apply to paid models, requests served through a BYOK key (even for :free models), or requests that consume credits.
Successful free-tier responses include the authoritative daily values in both X-RateLimit-* and RateLimit-* headers: Limit, Remaining, Reset (seconds until 00
Policy. These are the daily-cap values, not the shorter per-minute request window. A rejected request keeps the same values and adds Retry-After.
When you exceed the cap, the API returns 429 with Retry-After set to the seconds remaining until midnight UTC:
{
"error": {
"code": "free_tier_daily_limit_exceeded",
"message": "Free-tier daily limit reached. Resets at 00:00 UTC.",
"type": "rate_limit_error"
}
}
See Rate Limits → Free-tier daily cap for the full 429 body and retry guidance.
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.
Configure
If your daily cap isn't enough, you have four ways to grow beyond the free tier:
Add credits
Top up your balance and call any paid model. No daily cap applies to paid or credit-backed traffic.
Subscribe to Go, Pro, Pro+, or Max
The Go plan ($2/mo) raises the free-model cap to 1000 requests/day and 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.
Add BYOK keys
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.
Use specific free models
Individual :free-suffixed models (for example meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b:free) share the same daily cap but let you pin a specific model.
Frequently asked questions
Does anyrouter/free share the daily cap with :free models?
Yes. All free-tier traffic — anyrouter/free and any model suffixed :free — draws from the same daily pool per account: 10 requests/day on Free, 1000 requests/day on Go, Pro, Pro+, or Max.
Does the cap reset automatically?
Yes, at 00
UTC every day. You don't need to do anything.Can I tell which model served my request?
Yes. The model field in the response body contains the resolved model id. You can also see it in Dashboard → Logs.
Is anyrouter/free available on all plans?
Yes, with a daily cap. The Free plan includes 10 free-model requests per day. Subscribe to Go ($2/mo) or donate an eligible provider key for 1000 requests/day. Paid models still need credits.