| Field | Typhoon (SCB 10X) | OpenRouter |
|---|---|---|
| Type | Ongoing free tier · perpetual | Ongoing free tier · renewing-quota |
| What's free | Free to use research showcase API — all Typhoon models at $0 | A rotating set of models with a :free suffix (16 on 2026-10-08; count fluctuates), single API across many providers |
| Rate limits | typhoon-asr-realtime: 100 reqs/minute (documented on the ASR page); LLM/OCR models: no published quotas (beta service) | 20 req/min; 50 req/day under 10 credits purchased lifetime, 1000 req/day once 10+ credits purchased (one-time, not a subscription) |
| Expires | no expiry | no expiry |
| The catch | By SCB 10X, the venture arm of Siam Commercial Bank, focused on Thai-language models. The free catalog spans LLMs (typhoon-v2.5-30b-a3b-instruct), OCR (typhoon-ocr family) and realtime Thai ASR (typhoon-asr-realtime, typhoon-isan-asr-realtime) — the hosted API is OpenAI-compatible, including audio transcriptions. Beta, provided as-is with no formal support; usage data is collected to improve the model; SCB claims no rights in outputs. Sign up for a free API key at opentyphoon.ai. | ToS (Jul 2026) prohibits reselling API access or building a competing service — platform-wide, not just the free models; per-model terms still apply |
| Credit card | not required | not required |
| Phone verification | not required | not required |
| Commercial use | allowed | allowed |
| OpenAI-compatible | yeshttps://api.opentyphoon.ai/v1 | yeshttps://openrouter.ai/api/v1 |
| Modalities | text, audio | text, vision |
| Free models (sample) | typhoon-asr-realtime typhoon-isan-asr-realtime typhoon-ocr typhoon-ocr-preview typhoon-ocr-v1.5 typhoon-v2.5-30b-a3b-instruct | cohere/north-mini-code:free google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it:free google/gemma-4-31b-it:free liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free nvidia/nemotron-3-nano-omni-30b-a3b-reasoning:free poolside/laguna-s-2.1:free |
| Official docs | docs.opentyphoon.ai/en/faq/ | openrouter.ai/docs/api-reference/limits |
| Last verified | 2026-08-14 | 2026-10-08 |