What's free
Laguna M.1 (225B) and Laguna XS.2 (33B, open-weights) are free for a limited time via a self-serve developer API key (also on OpenRouter)
Rate limits
Preview rate limits not published
The catch
Coding-focused models. Poolside describes the free access as 'free for a limited time' (not perpetual) and it may change at general availability. Self-serve key at platform.poolside.ai; OpenRouter is an alternative route.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://inference.poolside.ai/v1", 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://inference.poolside.ai/v1/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 (2026-07-31) — generated from the git history of providers.json.
- 2026-08-14 Updated card requirement
- 2026-08-14 Updated free tier, the catch, free type
- 2026-07-31 Added to the hub