| Field | Deepgram | Pollinations.ai |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Trial credit · trial-credit | Ongoing free tier · perpetual |
| What's free | $200 free credit on signup (no card, no expiration) — Nova speech-to-text and Aura text-to-speech at pay-as-you-go rates | Free hosted image models (Flux, Turbo, Stable Diffusion) via a simple GET URL; also text and audio. No signup required to start |
| Rate limits | STT pre-recorded up to 50 concurrent; STT streaming up to 150; TTS REST up to 15; TTS streaming up to 45 | Anonymous ~1 request / 15s; free registration (Seed tier) ~1 request / 5s |
| Expires | no expiry | no expiry |
| The catch | No card and no expiration on the credit. Data catch: the Model Improvement Program is opt-OUT — send mip_opt_out=true per request to keep your data out of training. Native REST/WebSocket API, not OpenAI-compatible. | Anonymous free images may carry a watermark (since 2025); free registration removes it via the nologo parameter. No card, no phone. Commercial use is not explicitly guaranteed in the docs. |
| Credit card | not required | not required |
| Phone verification | not required | not required |
| Commercial use | allowed | not confirmed |
| OpenAI-compatible | no | no |
| Modalities | audio | image, text, audio |
| Free models (sample) | no sample | openai-fast |
| Official docs | deepgram.com/pricing | github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/master/APIDOCS.md |
| Last verified | 2026-10-08 | 2026-08-14 |