Nvidia · Free ✓ verified recently
NVIDIA NIM / API Catalog free developer tier (hosted inference at integrate.api.nvidia.com)
confidence: high
Verdict
NVIDIA's build.nvidia.com developer tier gives any NVIDIA-account holder (no card) free hosted inference on ~95 OpenAI-compatible NIM endpoints, throttled to 40 rpm / 10,000 requests/day with no published USD credit cap; production use requires a paid upgrade.
The terms
- Free trial tier of NVIDIA-hosted NIM inference endpoints (OpenAI-compatible base URL https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1): sign in with an NVIDIA account to generate an API key, no credit card required; 95 LLM/multimodal models currently listed by the official /v1/models endpoint (57 artifacts carry the 'Free Endpoint' badge in build.nvidia.com/models facets); shared rate limiting shown site-wide as "Up to 40 rpm" and "10,000 requests per day", may vary by model; browser playground calls do not deduct credits while remote API calls count against trial credits; no USD credit amount is published and production use requires upgrading to a paid subscription.
From the official page
"All models offer a free trial tier with no credit card required. Sign in to generate an API key."
"Up to 40 rpm"
"10,000 requests per day"
"Rate limits may vary by model and traffic from other users may cause throttling."
"Then, you can explore and interact with more AI models through the browser or sign up for free credits to access NVIDIA-hosted endpoints for application prototyping in the NVIDIA API catalog ."
"API call credits are not deducted when interacting with models on build.nvidia.com through the browser. Remote API calls to NVIDIA-hosted endpoints count against trail API credits."
"The API Services are available for your limited use for a limited time."
"You must have a separate service subscription (“Subscription”) from NVIDIA or a third-party service provider (“Service Provider”) to use the API Service in production or to use the API Service after you have used your available Credits."
Verified 2026-08-26
The math
Free within provider limits — effective marginal cost is $0 until quotas are hit.
Watch out
Machine-discovered entry — numbers trace to official sources via quotes; editorial verdict pending.