What's free
10M free tokens (one-time) across all models — embeddings (v3/v4), rerankers, classifier; plus a keyless Reader (r.jina.ai) for basic use
Rate limits
Free key: 100 RPM / 100k TPM for embeddings & reranker (2 concurrent); keyless Reader 20 RPM
The catch
The 10M-token balance is a one-time grant that does not replenish; the keyless Reader is genuinely ongoing. Hosted API is commercial-OK and data is not used for training. No card required.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.jina.ai/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="<a-free-model>",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.jina.ai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"<a-free-model>","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'