12britz/awesome-free-models

Awesome Free Models is a curated reference list of AI models, APIs, and tools that cost nothing to use. It is a document, not software. As of the last link check on June 7, 2026, it covers 29 models and 150 tools across 15 categories. The list is split into roughly three kinds of resources. First, open-weight models: these are AI models whose weights have been publicly released, meaning you can download and run them on your own computer without paying a usage fee. The list includes models from Meta, Google, Mistral, DeepSeek, Alibaba, Xiaomi, and others, with notes on context window size, licensing, and any hardware requirements. Second, free API providers: these are services that let you send requests to AI models over the internet without paying, either permanently or through a free tier. Providers listed include Google AI Studio, Groq, Hugging Face, OpenRouter, NVIDIA NIM, and others. Third, tooling: software for running models locally (such as Ollama), chat interfaces, coding assistants, tools for building retrieval systems, agentic frameworks, fine-tuning utilities, and prompt engineering aids. The list also includes sections on datasets, model hosting platforms, learning resources, benchmark leaderboards, and online communities for people working with open AI tools. Each entry is a short description with a link. The maintainer notes that all links were verified on June 7, 2026, and five broken links were fixed in that pass. The list is released under the CC0 public domain license, meaning there are no restrictions on reuse. The full README is longer than what was shown.