What's free
Open-weight models (Llama, Qwen, GPT-OSS) plus Whisper, no credit card required
Rate limits
e.g. llama-3.1-8b-instant: 30 RPM/14.4K RPD/6K TPM/500K TPD; llama-3.3-70b-versatile: 30 RPM/1K RPD/12K TPM/100K TPD; qwen3-32b: 60 RPM/1K RPD/6K TPM/500K TPD; similar for GPT-OSS and Whisper models
The catch
Limits apply at the organization level, not per API key. Phone verification required at signup
Free models · sample
llama-3.3-70b-versatilellama-3.1-8b-instantopenai/gpt-oss-120bopenai/gpt-oss-20bwhisper-large-v3-turbowhisper-large-v3A sample of models reachable on the free tier — the live catalog changes. Pull the current set with GET https://api.groq.com/openai/v1/models.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.groq.com/openai/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="llama-3.3-70b-versatile",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.groq.com/openai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"llama-3.3-70b-versatile","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'