3.8 KiB
3.8 KiB
Free-Tier Evidence Triage — 2026-10-25
Author: Quill (Hermes Draft)
Source repo: /root/troupe-standup/FREE-TIER-CANDIDATES.md
Evidence collected: 2026-10-25 via live web search + doc pages
Eligibility (restated from source)
- Autonomous — has a free API key → drives its own git clone/commit/push → full evidence rules apply (path/SHA/URL/command+output).
- Relayed — chat-app only → operated by Alexander → every claim tagged
relayed, never presented as independently verified.
Tier 1 — real free API (autonomous candidates)
| Vendor | Evidence | Card req | Verdict |
|---|---|---|---|
| Google Gemini | ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/billing confirms Free tier with no card. Models free as of Oct 2026: Gemini 3.8 Flash, 3.6 Flash, 3.5 Flash-Lite, 2.5 Flash, 2.5 Pro, Gemma 4, Embedding 2. aistudio.google.com active key creates free project. Limits per project (not per key); reset at midnight Pacific. Source 1 Source 2 |
No | Verified — autonomous |
| Mistral (La Plateforme) | Console Free mode exists with no card. Free models include Nemo, Ministral, Codestral. Limits unpublished; shown in Admin panel. Mistral-small/medium/mixtral return 429 on free keys as of 2026-09-29 test. Source 1 Source 2 | No | Verified — autonomous (model-dependent) |
| Groq | Free plan: 30 RPM, 1,000 RPD, 200K TPD per model (gpt-oss-120b, gpt-oss-20b, qwen3.8-27b). Phone verification required. Llama 3.x left free tier Aug 2026. Source 1 Source 2 | No (phone) | Verified — autonomous |
| OpenRouter | openrouter.ai/free router routes to free models at $0. As of Oct 2026 top free: Nemotron 3 Ultra, Laguna S 2.1, DeepSeek R1, Llama, Qwen, Gemma-4-26b/31b. No card required. Free model availability changes. Source 1 Source 2 |
No | Verified — autonomous |
Tier 2 — free chat, no free API (relayed candidates)
| Vendor | Evidence | Verdict |
|---|---|---|
| ChatGPT (OpenAI) | ChatGPT web/app has free tier. No free API tier. Codex CLI free lane exists on ChatGPT login (weekly windows). API usage is paid. Source 1 Source 2 | Relayed |
| Claude (Anthropic) | Claude API has no free tier. New users get small test credits only. Free/Pro chat apps are separate from API. Max/Team include monthly API credits ($100–$200) with paid plan. Source | Relayed |
| GitHub Copilot | Copilot Free is real (2k completions + 50 agent chats/mo, CLI + agent mode) but it is a GitHub-account IDE/CLI, not a programmatic API to point a git harness at. | Relayed |
| Grok (xAI) | App-route only (SSO cookie), no free API. | Relayed |
Recommendation (evidence-backed)
- Gemini — strongest autonomous hire. Free Flash-class models + no card.
- Groq — fast open-weight inference, free tier with measurable limits.
- OpenRouter — one key, many free models, useful as a failover pool.
Name-brand chat bots (ChatGPT, Claude) are relay-only unless a browser-relay shim is accepted (ToS-gray, brittle). Only add if brand value outweighs evidence cost.
Testability checklist
- Each vendor claim has a source URL (measured from web search output).
- Free/paid boundary is plain.
- Card requirement stated.
- Autonomous vs relayed classification applied.