# 🔓 The $0 FREE AI stack 2026 — full daily workflow, no card **URL:** \ **Category:** Tutorials & Methods\ **Tags:** tools, programming, freebies, tips-tricks, ai\ **Created:** [2026 年6 月 20 日 21:50 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270 "2026-06-20T21:50:48Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 1
作者： ![SRZ](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/srz/32/146132_2.png) [@SRZ](https://onehack.st/u/SRZ)\ 发布日期： [2026 年6 月 20 日 21:50 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/1 "2026-06-20T21:50:49Z")
# 🔓 Free AI 2026 ➜ Google’s free coder ⤷ free anonymous chat (DuckDuckGo) ⤷ free image AI (link) ⤷ no card Frontier AI for $0 in 2026 is a full daily workflow — code, chat, images, the lot — not some trial-stack hack. No card, no US phone, no timer ticking. Most people are still paying $20/mo because nobody told them the doors were open. ![image](https://onehack.st/uploads/default/original/3X/5/b/5b25ab738dfd79e6e3bcbf541dc24aff0f43d81c.jpeg) Pick what you need 👇 > **⚡ Coding agents — the free stack nobody mentions** > > Google quietly shipped its own Claude Code competitor and zero roundups lead with it. > > [**Gemini CLI**](https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli) — Apache 2.0, terminal-native, **1,000 requests/day free on Gemini 3.1 Pro**. That’s the actual Pro model, not Flash. Roughly 20× the daily quota of the same Pro model on the regular API. Install: `npx @google/gemini-cli` and sign in with a Google account. > > The rest of the free coding lineup: > > | Tool | What it is | Stars / License | > | --- | --- | --- | > | [**OpenCode**](https://opencode.ai) | Open-source Claude Code clone, single Go binary, 75+ providers, polished TUI | ~165k / MIT | > | [**Cline**](https://github.com/cline/cline) | VS Code agent, Plan/Act mode (thinks before editing) | ~62k / Apache 2.0 | > | [**Aider**](https://aider.chat) | Terminal pair-programmer, auto-commits to git, polyglot benchmark champ | ~44k / Apache 2.0 | > | [**Continue.dev**](https://continue.dev) | The only OSS option with JetBrains + autocomplete | ~25k / Apache 2.0 | > | [**OpenHands**](https://github.com/All-Hands-AI/OpenHands) | Autonomous agent in a sandboxed Docker, runs headless in CI | ~75k / MIT | > > Point any of them at a free API key by swapping the OpenAI base URL: > > ```auto > OPENAI_BASE_URL=https://openrouter.ai/api/v1 > OPENAI_API_KEY=sk-or-... > MODEL=qwen3-coder:free > > ``` > > Other base URLs that take a free key: `https://api.cerebras.ai/v1` (1M tokens/day on Llama 3.3 70B and Qwen3-32B), `https://api.groq.com/openai/v1` (fastest inference on the planet), `https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1` (NVIDIA NIM, no card, key starts with `nvapi-`). > > > 💡 **Trick:** match your client’s rate limits to each provider’s _real_ tier — don’t raise them locally. Raising them just moves the rejection from your code (clean skip) to the provider (a real 429 that counts against you). For Groq free: 30 RPM (requests per minute), 6,000 TPM (tokens per minute), 14,400 RPD (requests per day) on the 8B models. Set those as your ceilings. > > Roo Code shut down May 15, 2026 — if anyone still recommends it, they’re months out of date. Cline ate that user base. > **💬 Chat — frontier models without the $20/mo wall** > > Pick by job: > > | Need | Pick | Catch | > | --- | --- | --- | > | Smart unrestricted chat | [**Gemini**](https://gemini.google.com) 2.5 Flash + [**Claude.ai**](https://claude.ai) free | Daily caps | > | Anonymous / privacy-first | [**DuckDuckGo Duck.ai**](https://duck.ai) | No account, IP stripped, 30-day delete | > | No quota, no model downgrade | [**DeepSeek**](https://chat.deepseek.com) | Conversations stored in China | > | GPT-5 + Claude + Gemini side-by-side | [**Poe**](https://poe.com) | 300 daily compute points free | > | GLM-5.2 (China’s Claude-class) | [**Z.ai**](https://chat.z.ai) | Google sign-in works globally | > | Kimi K2.6 / Qwen3 | [**Kimi**](https://www.kimi.com) / [**Qwen Chat**](https://chat.qwen.ai) | China jurisdiction | > | Built into the browser | [**Brave Leo**](https://brave.com/leo/) | Brave browser required | > | Inside Microsoft tools | [**Copilot**](https://copilot.microsoft.com) free | Decent for daily writing | > > Pro tier on Google AI Studio got quietly paywalled April 1, 2026 — free tier is Flash/Flash-Lite only now. Pro = 50 RPD which won’t run a single real workload. Skip it. > **🪄 Image gen — no key, no signup, just a URL** > > The dumbest trick in the deck and the most reliable: > > ```auto > https://image.pollinations.ai/prompt/a_dragon_eating_dosa > > ``` > > Drop that into a browser. You get an image. Drop it into a Markdown file, a Discord bot, a personal site — it embeds anywhere because it’s literally just an image URL. > > Replace spaces with underscores. No key, no signup, no quota for normal use. [**Pollinations.ai**](https://pollinations.ai) backs it with Flux, GPT Image, Seedream — all behind one host. 8M+ images/month, zero data storage, [open-source on GitHub](https://github.com/pollinations/pollinations). Full API docs at [`gen.pollinations.ai`](https://github.com/pollinations/pollinations/blob/main/APIDOCS.md) for OpenAI-compatible access if you want keys for higher limits. > > When you want a real API: > > | Service | Free tier | > | --- | --- | > | [**Together FLUX.1-schnell-Free**](https://www.together.ai/models/flux-1-schnell-free) | ~8,000 images/day, 6/min, free endpoint | > | [**Microsoft Designer**](https://designer.microsoft.com) | DALL-E free in the browser | > | [**Ideogram**](https://ideogram.ai) | Daily free credits | > | [**Leonardo.ai**](https://leonardo.ai) | Daily free tokens | > | [**HuggingFace Spaces**](https://huggingface.co/spaces) | Free ZeroGPU on SDXL / Flux community demos | > | [**Adobe Firefly**](https://firefly.adobe.com) | Monthly free generative credits | > > Local: ComfyUI + Flux.1-schnell (Apache 2.0, 12B params, 1-4 step generation) on a 12GB+ GPU or any Apple Silicon Mac. > **🔌 Raw API access — no card, no waiting** > > | Provider | Free tier | Catch | > | --- | --- | --- | > | [**NVIDIA build**](https://build.nvidia.com) | DeepSeek V3.2, Qwen3 Coder 480B, Llama 3.3, GLM-4.6, GPT-OSS-120B | 1,000-5,000 starter credits, ~40 RPM/model | > | [**Cerebras**](https://cloud.cerebras.ai) | 1M tokens/day, Llama / Qwen / GPT-OSS-120B | 30 RPM, 8K context cap on free | > | [**Groq**](https://console.groq.com) | 30 RPM, 14,400 RPD on Llama 8B; lower on bigger models | 6K TPM bottleneck on most models | > | [**Google AI Studio**](https://aistudio.google.com) | Gemini 2.5 Flash, 1,500 RPD, 1M TPM | Free tier inputs may be used for training | > | [**OpenRouter `:free`**](https://openrouter.ai/models?max_price=0) | ~27 free models (DeepSeek R1, Qwen3 Coder, Llama 4, GLM-4.5-Air, GPT-OSS) | 20 RPM / 50 RPD (1,000 RPD with $10 lifetime credit) | > | [**Mistral**](https://console.mistral.ai) | Mistral Large/Small/Codestral free experiment tier | Phone verification required | > | [**HuggingFace Inference Providers**](https://huggingface.co/docs/inference-providers) | Routes across fal, Replicate, SambaNova, Together, Fireworks, Groq, Cohere | Small monthly free credits | > | [**Cloudflare Workers AI**](https://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/) | 10,000 Neurons/day forever (~15-25 text-gen calls/day) | Larger models gated to paid | > | [**Puter.js**](https://puter.com) | Zero-key trick — embed AI in a web app, each user covers their own usage via their Puter account | Web app only | > | [**GitHub Models**](https://github.com/marketplace/models) | GPT-5, Claude, Llama, Phi for testing inside GitHub | Low rate limits, dev only | > > > 💡 **Trick:** Don’t engineer a multi-provider router as a beginner. Pick one strong path per use case, rotate manually when you hit a wall. The “stack 5 free providers behind LiteLLM” advice that gets thrown around is a beautifully complicated way to give yourself a part-time DevOps job — [TrueFoundry’s 2026 review](https://www.truefoundry.com/blog/a-detailed-litellm-review-features-pricing-pros-and-cons-2026) puts production-grade LiteLLM at ~$1,730/mo in DevOps labor before you make a single API call. If you outgrow free, that’s when you stack. > **🇮🇳 The UPI backdoor (when your card keeps getting rejected)** > > If OpenAI, Anthropic, or Google rejected your Indian card — there’s a way around the wall. > > [**AICredits.in**](https://aicredits.in) runs 300+ frontier models behind one OpenAI-compatible API key: > > - GPT-5, Claude Opus 4.7, Gemini 3.x, DeepSeek V4, Grok — plus 280 more > - Pay via **UPI (GPay / PhonePe / Paytm), net banking, INR debit/credit cards** through Razorpay > - **Minimum top-up ₹100** , no KYC for standard usage > - Credits valid 1 year, drop-in OpenAI replacement (`base_url` swap) > - Per-key budget caps in the dashboard so you can’t accidentally drain > > Not technically “free” — but it’s the only path that doesn’t fall over on _“we don’t accept Indian cards.”_ Pair with the free stack above: free for daily work, ₹100-500 top-up for the occasional Opus or GPT-5 session. > > Worth knowing — the Indian sovereign AI stack: > > - [**Bhashini**](https://bhashini.gov.in) — government translation + speech APIs for all 22 scheduled languages, free for many use cases. Live in MyGov (140M users), CoWIN, several state portals. > - [**Sarvam AI**](https://www.sarvam.ai) — open-source Indian foundation model, fluent in 11 Indic languages, API access available. > - Kruti (Krutrim’s consumer chatbot) is dead as of April 2026 — Krutrim laid off ~200 staff, app pulled from stores. Skip it. > **🏠 Run it locally — a $599 Mac Mini is the cheap frontier rig** > > The “you need a $2,500 GPU build to run local AI” line is bullshit in 2026. Apple’s unified memory ate it. > > ```auto > ┌──────────────────────────────────┐ > Mac │ $599 16GB M4 → 7-13B @ 50+ tok/s │ > Mini │ $1,399 24GB M4 Pro → Qwen3.6-27B dense │ > family │ $1,799 48GB M4 Pro → Qwen3.6-35B-A3B 24/7 │ > 2026 │ $4,500 128GB M4 Max → Llama 3.3 70B @ 28t/s│ > └──────────────────────────────────┘ > > ``` > > The $599 Mac Mini M4 hits **55 tokens/sec per $1,000 spent** — twice the value of any GPU build per [Local AI Master’s calculator](https://localaimaster.com/blog/apple-silicon-ai-buying-guide). Silent, low power, fits in a 5-inch square. The M4 Max gets 28 tok/s on Llama 3.3 70B at Q4 quant — that’s faster than you read. > > Software: > > - [**Ollama**](https://ollama.com) — easiest. `ollama run qwen3:30b-a3b` and you’re done. > - [**LM Studio**](https://lmstudio.ai) — GUI with model browser built in. > - [**Jan.ai**](https://jan.ai) — privacy-first local chat UI. > - [**MLX**](https://github.com/ml-explore/mlx) — Apple’s native framework, 10-30% faster than llama.cpp on M-series for 96GB+ rigs. > > Models that actually fit consumer hardware in 2026 (clean commercial licenses): > > | VRAM / RAM | Model | License | > | --- | --- | --- | > | 8GB | Gemma 3 4B, Phi-4 Mini, Qwen3-8B | Gemma / MIT / Apache 2.0 | > | 12GB | Phi-4 14B, Gemma 3 12B, Qwen3-14B | MIT / Gemma / Apache 2.0 | > | 16GB | Gemma 3 27B, Qwen3.6-27B (~16.8GB Q4) | Gemma / Apache 2.0 | > | 24GB | **Qwen3-30B-A3B** , Qwen3-32B | Apache 2.0 (commercial OK) | > | 48GB | Llama 3.3 70B Q4 (clean) | Llama Community License | > > Forget DeepSeek V4, GLM-5.2, Kimi K2.6, MiniMax M3 on consumer hardware — those are server-only in 2026 (600GB+ at INT4 quant). The realistic local frontier is **Qwen3-30B-A3B** — Apache 2.0, commercial-OK, fits 24GB cleanly, 35B total with only 3B params active per token (MoE — mixture of experts, only part of the model fires). > > > 💡 **Trick:** No Mac, no GPU? [**Kaggle Notebooks**](https://www.kaggle.com/code) gives 30 GPU-hours/week free (T4/P100 16GB, 9-hr sessions), no credit card. Best free GPU on the internet for trying local models before you buy hardware. [Google Colab free](https://colab.research.google.com) covers the rest of the week. > **☠️ The graveyard — what died in 2026 (don't waste time)** > > | Method | Status | What happened | > | --- | --- | --- | > | **Roo Code** | ❌ DEAD | Shut down May 15, 2026 — users pushed back to [Cline](https://github.com/cline/cline) | > | **Kruti AI app** | ❌ DEAD | Krutrim laid off ~200 staff April 2026, app pulled from stores | > | **Google AI Studio free Pro** | ❌ KILLED | Paywalled April 1, 2026 — free tier is Flash/Flash-Lite only now | > | **Veo 2 / Veo 3** | ⏳ DEPRECATING | Shutting down **June 30, 2026** — migrate this week if you use them | > | **GitHub Copilot Pro/Student new signups** | ⏳ PAUSED | Paused April 2026; all plans moved to usage-based credits June 1, 2026 | > | **Kimi K2.6 on OpenRouter `:free`** | ⏳ ENDED | Lost the `:free` tag June 13, 2026 — now paid | > | **SambaNova free tier** | ⚠ UNCERTAIN | Folding into paid Developer tier per community threads | > | **Chutes.ai free frontier** | ⚠ SHRUNK | Frontier models removed from base subscription Feb 27, 2026 | * * * The whole loot in one line — [**Gemini CLI**](https://github.com/google-gemini/gemini-cli) for coding, [**DuckDuckGo Duck.ai**](https://duck.ai) for anonymous chat, [**Pollinations URL**](https://pollinations.ai) for images, [**AICredits.in**](https://aicredits.in) via UPI when you need frontier. That’s the stack. Everything else is variations. Stop paying $20/mo. The doors were open the whole time. ---
作者： ![slimjval](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/slimjval/32/30254_2.png) [@slimjval](https://onehack.st/u/slimjval)\ 发布日期： [2026 年6 月 21 日 03:16 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/2 "2026-06-21T03:16:21Z")
Useful share, thanks ---
作者： ![jim\_ross](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/jim_ross/32/120087_2.png) [@jim\_ross](https://onehack.st/u/jim_ross)\ 发布日期： [2026 年6 月 21 日 09:54 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/3 "2026-06-21T09:54:18Z")
awesome share mate 🙂 ---
作者： ![adbenn91](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/adbenn91/32/152792_2.png) [@adbenn91](https://onehack.st/u/adbenn91)\ 发布日期： [2026 年6 月 23 日 08:51 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/4 "2026-06-23T08:51:34Z")
@SRZ you are unbelievable ---
作者： ![Timmy1](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/timmy1/32/173894_2.png) [@Timmy1](https://onehack.st/u/Timmy1)\ 发布日期： [2026 年6 月 23 日 15:29 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/5 "2026-06-23T15:29:32Z")
I think the [https://www.together.ai/models/flux-1-schnell-free](https://www.together.ai/models/flux-1-schnell-free) got pulled ☹ ---
作者： ![andyframes](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/andyframes/32/180050_2.png) [@andyframes](https://onehack.st/u/andyframes)\ 发布日期： [2026 年10 月 24 日 03:15 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/6 "2026-10-24T03:15:34Z")
Useful roundup. One thing worth adding from the practical side: the free image tools are fine for concepts, but the moment you need output that a printer will accept, the limits show up fast — wrong page size, no bleed, text that comes out garbled or misspelled. So it helps to separate “idea generation” from “file going to press” in your workflow instead of treating them as the same step. On the packaging side, [PACK AI STUDIO](https://packaistudio.com/) generates box, bag, can and label designs from a short product description and returns print PDFs with bleed at real sizes, with quoted text kept exactly as typed. For anyone doing product visuals in this stack, that covers the part image generators tend to skip. ---
作者： ![Grace2077](https://onehack.st/user_avatar/onehack.st/grace2077/32/179796_2.png) [@Grace2077](https://onehack.st/u/Grace2077)\ 发布日期： [2026 年10 月 24 日 08:27 UTC](https://onehack.st/t/the-0-free-ai-stack-2026-full-daily-workflow-no-card/323270/7 "2026-10-24T08:27:37Z")
That split between idea generation and print-ready output is the part I wish more roundups spelled out. My habit now is to use the free image tools only for rough concepts, then rebuild the final file in a proper layout tool at the exact page size with bleed set before anything goes to print. I also keep a short checklist for every print job: correct size, bleed, fonts embedded, and text proofread twice, because a free tool will happily hand you a pretty image with a misspelled label. One test print on plain paper before the real run has saved me more than once. The free stack is great for daily work, as long as the last step before print is treated as a separate job, not an afterthought.