A free AI API: what free really means in 2026
Free tiers, trial credit and rate-limited models compared on what they ask for and what they keep, next to a prepaid key from $10 with no subscription and no identity check.
Free tiers, trial credit and rate-limited models compared on what they ask for and what they keep, next to a prepaid key from $10 with no subscription and no identity check. This guide uses the live RelaySwitch catalog, so prices and model availability stay current as the catalog changes.
01The short answer
Free tiers, trial credit and rate-limited models compared on what they ask for and what they keep, next to a prepaid key from $10 with no subscription and no identity check. RelaySwitch puts the answer on one API base URL, one prepaid balance and one key. Pay by Card, Apple Pay, PayPal, USDT, USDC, BTC, ETH, SOL, then send the model id shown on the Models page.
02Models and prices
- Agnes 2.0 Flash — $8.0000 input and $8.0000 output per million tokens.
- Agnes 2.5 Flash — $0.0000 input and $0.0000 output per million tokens.
- Agnes 2.5 PRO Alpha — $1.4400 input and $2.8800 output per million tokens.
- Agnes 3.0 Flash — $0.1200 input and $0.3600 output per million tokens.
- Agnes Image 2.1 Flash — $0.0000 input and $0.0000 output per million tokens.
- Aion RP Llama 3.1 8B — $3.2000 input and $6.4000 output per million tokens.
- Amoral Gemma3 27B v2 — $1.0500 input and $1.0500 output per million tokens.
- Anubis 70B v1.1 — $1.0850 input and $1.0850 output per million tokens.
03Call the API
Base URL https://api.relayswitch.io/v1, your key (it starts with sk-relay-), the model id. Nothing else changes.
from openai import OpenAI client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.relayswitch.io/v1", api_key="sk-relay-...")reply = client.chat.completions.create( model="agnes-2.0-flash", messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Say hello in five words."}],)print(reply.choices[0].message.content)curl https://api.relayswitch.io/v1/chat/completions \ -H "Authorization: Bearer $RELAYSWITCH_KEY" \ -H "Content-Type: application/json" \ -d '{"model": "agnes-2.0-flash", "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Hello"}]}'04What to do next
Use the pricing page for billing details, the docs for integration examples, and pay by card or crypto for top-up steps.
Questions
- How are prices kept current?
- The page reads the public catalog at render; the figures are not hard-coded.
- Do I need KYC?
- No. Sign up with an email address and top up by card or crypto.