What's free
$5 in free credits for new accounts, usable across all public models
Rate limits
Published Free Trial per-model limits: 5 RPM / 30,000 TPM / 1,000,000 TPH / 1,000,000 TPD (e.g. gpt-oss-120b, zai-glm-4.7, gemma-4-31b); limits vary by model
The catch
A verified payment method is required to activate Playground/API access (no charge until you buy credits). Credits expire 30 days after grant; whether any free access persists past expiry is not stated
Free models · sample
gpt-oss-120bzai-glm-4.7gemma-4-31bA sample of models reachable on the free tier — the live catalog changes. Pull the current set with GET https://api.cerebras.ai/v1/models.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.cerebras.ai/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="gpt-oss-120b",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.cerebras.ai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"gpt-oss-120b","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'Appears in
Change history
How this free tier has changed since we started tracking it (2026-07-30) — generated from the git history of providers.json.
- 2026-08-02 Updated free tier, rate limits, the catch, free type, commercial-use terms, card requirement
- 2026-07-30 Added to the hub