What's free
Rate-limited free tier (applies when no payment method is linked) across all models
Rate limits
Free Tier: 20 RPM / 20 RPD / 200,000 TPD across all models; Developer Tier (card required): 60-240 RPM depending on model
The catch
Free Tier applies when no payment method is linked to the account; SambaCloud ToS grants a commercial license (no evaluation-only clause). The previously-listed "$5 / 3 months" trial could not be re-confirmed on official pages (2026-07-30).
Free models · sample
DeepSeek-V3.1Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instructgpt-oss-120bA sample of models reachable on the free tier — the live catalog changes. Pull the current set with GET https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/models.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.sambanova.ai/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="DeepSeek-V3.1",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"DeepSeek-V3.1","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'