What's free
$100 promotional credits valid for 90 days for eligible Novita Agent Sandbox usage (CPU, RAM, storage), granted after an account-setup survey; Novita does not say they apply to Model API calls; the pricing page also lists a few LLMs as Free (e.g. Ling 3.1 Flash, Apodex 1.1 Mini)
- Credit card
- not required
- Phone verification
- not confirmed
- Commercial use
- evaluation only
Free limits
Numeric limits are not recorded in structured form for this provider.
In the provider's words
Per model, by account tier. New/low-spend accounts are Tier T1 (monthly top-ups <= $50): typically 30 RPM and 50M TPM per model (a few models 50 RPM; some 2M-5M TPM). The Free-priced LLMs (Ling 3.1 Flash, Apodex 1.1 Mini) are 30 RPM / 50M TPM at T1
The catch
Signup advertises $100 Sandbox credits valid for 90 days; Novita's sandbox pricing doc describes them as credits for "eligible Novita Sandbox usage" and does not say they apply to Model API calls. 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.
Free models: not listed yet.
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
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Change history
How this free tier has changed since we started tracking it (2026-07-30) — generated from the git history of providers.json.
- 2026-10-08 Updated rate limits
- 2026-10-08 Updated free tier, the catch
- 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