What's free
$100 Sandbox credits, valid for 90 days
Rate limits
Various open-weight models
The catch
Official signup advertises $100 Sandbox credits valid for 90 days; no credit card required. Novita Terms of Service state that the Site and Marketplace Offerings may not be exploited for any commercial purpose without express prior written permission.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.novita.ai/openai", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="<a-free-model>",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.novita.ai/openai/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"<a-free-model>","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.
- 2026-08-11 Updated the catch, commercial-use terms
- 2026-08-05 Updated free tier, the catch, card requirement
- 2026-07-30 Added to the hub