What Cloudflare Workers AI's free tier allows
Both the Workers Free and Workers Paid plans include 10,000 Neurons per day at no charge, resetting daily at 00:00 UTC. Neurons are a compute unit rather than a request count, so the number of requests you get depends on the model and prompt size. On the Free plan there is no overage: once the allocation is spent, requests fail until reset. Workers Paid bills overage at $0.011 per 1,000 Neurons.
- Published limits
- Published in compute units
- Free access type
- Provider free tier
- Credit card
- Not required
- Protocol
- OpenAI-compatible at
https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/v1 - Lifecycle
- Active
- Sources reviewed
- 2026-07-25
The pricing page does not state whether a credit card is required to sign up for the Workers Free plan, so treat the card column as unverified for this entry.
Where Cloudflare Workers AI sits in this catalog
Cloudflare Workers AI is one of 15 provider free tier entries among the 25 providers detailed here. It asks for no credit card, which is true of 23 of the 25. It publishes no fixed request count, as 16 of the 25 do not.
| Compared with | Published limits | Card | Endpoint |
|---|---|---|---|
| Cloudflare Workers AI (this page) | Published in compute units | Not required | api.cloudflare.com |
| Hugging Face Inference Providers | Published as a credit balance | Not required | router.huggingface.co |
| SiliconFlow | 1000 requests per minute | Not required | api.siliconflow.com |
| Fireworks AI | 10 requests per minute | Not required | api.fireworks.ai |
Models Cloudflare Workers AI lists as free
@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast— Llama, also free at 8 other providers here@cf/openai/gpt-oss-120b— gpt-oss, also free at 9 other providers here@cf/qwen/qwen2.5-coder-32b-instruct— Qwen, also free at 8 other providers here
9 other providers here also host the gpt-oss family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: GroqCloud, SambaNova Cloud, Hugging Face Inference Providers, Fireworks AI, Ollama Cloud, Cerebras Inference, Vercel AI Gateway, Together AI, Scaleway Generative APIs. 8 other providers here also host the Llama family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: GroqCloud, SambaNova Cloud, Fireworks AI, IBM watsonx.ai, Together AI, Nebius Token Factory, DeepInfra, Scaleway Generative APIs. 8 other providers here also host the Qwen family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: SiliconFlow, Alibaba Cloud Model Studio, Ollama Cloud, Together AI, Nebius Token Factory, DeepInfra, Chutes, Scaleway Generative APIs.
Checking a Cloudflare Workers AI key
The endpoint answers the CORS preflight with 405 and no allow-origin header, so a browser refuses to send the Authorization header. That was measured against https://api.cloudflare.com on 2026-07-25.
So the browser checker cannot reach it and does not pretend otherwise. Run this instead:
#!/usr/bin/env sh
set -eu
: "${CLOUDFLARE_WORKERS_AI_API_KEY:?Set CLOUDFLARE_WORKERS_AI_API_KEY to a key you created yourself at the provider console}"
# Prints the models this key can reach, then the HTTP status on its own line so
# 200, 401, and 429 stay distinguishable.
curl --silent --show-error \
--write-out '\nHTTP %{http_code}\n' \
--header "Authorization: Bearer $CLOUDFLARE_WORKERS_AI_API_KEY" \
'https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/v1/models'
Using a Cloudflare Workers AI key
Cloudflare Workers AI serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/v1. Point any client that accepts a custom base URL at it, and let the client read the key from CLOUDFLARE_WORKERS_AI_API_KEY so the value never lands in a config file:
# Merge this snippet into ~/.codex/config.toml.
# Project-level config cannot select a custom model provider.
model = "@cf/meta/llama-3.3-70b-instruct-fp8-fast"
model_provider = "cloudflare-workers-ai"
[model_providers.cloudflare-workers-ai]
name = "Cloudflare Workers AI OpenAI-compatible gateway"
base_url = "https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/v1"
env_key = "CLOUDFLARE_WORKERS_AI_API_KEY"
wire_api = "responses"
Questions about the Cloudflare Workers AI free tier
Does Cloudflare Workers AI ask for a credit card?
No. Cloudflare Workers AI is one of 23 providers here that hand out free access without a card, so the only cost of trying it is the signup.
What are Cloudflare Workers AI's free-tier rate limits?
Cloudflare Workers AI publishes no single free-tier number: its limits are published in compute units. This catalog leaves that blank rather than guessing a figure.
What happens when a Cloudflare Workers AI key hits the limit?
The endpoint answers 429. That is a statement about the request that was refused, not about how much quota is left; only a reset header from the provider tells you when it clears.
Is the Cloudflare Workers AI free tier going away?
Nothing in Cloudflare Workers AI's own documentation says so as of 2026-07-25. The pricing page does not state whether a credit card is required to sign up for the Workers Free plan, so treat the card column as unverified for this entry.
Can Cloudflare Workers AI be used with Codex, Cline, or Continue?
Yes. Cloudflare Workers AI serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.cloudflare.com/client/v4/accounts/ACCOUNT_ID/ai/v1, so any client that accepts a custom base URL can use it. Claude Code is the exception, because it speaks the Anthropic protocol instead.
Official sources
- Workers AI pricinghttps://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/platform/pricing/
- Workers AI OpenAI compatible endpointshttps://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/configuration/open-ai-compatibility/
- Workers AI modelshttps://developers.cloudflare.com/workers-ai/models/
Every figure above was read from those pages on 2026-07-25. Where a provider states a limit only inside a console, this catalog records that fact instead of a number. See the methodology for how an entry gets in and how it gets corrected.