Provider free tier · Sources reviewed 2026-07-25

SambaNova Cloud free tier

What SambaNova Cloud publishes about its free allowance, which models it covers, and how to point an existing tool at it.

What SambaNova Cloud's free tier allows

The Free Tier applies whenever no payment method is linked to the account. For DeepSeek-V3.1, Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct and gpt-oss-120b the free limits are 20 RPM, 20 RPD and 200,000 tokens per day. Linking a payment method moves the account to the Developer Tier (60-240 RPM, 12,000-48,000 RPD, 20M tokens/day across all models).

Published limits
20 requests per minute, 20 requests per day
Free access type
Provider free tier
Credit card
Not required
Protocol
OpenAI-compatible at https://api.sambanova.ai/v1
Lifecycle
Active
Sources reviewed
2026-07-25

Free Tier is defined by the absence of a linked payment method, so it is reachable without a card. The 20 requests-per-day cap is the binding constraint for most users.

Where SambaNova Cloud sits in this catalog

SambaNova Cloud 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 fixed numbers — 20 requests per minute, 20 requests per day — which only 9 of the 25 do.

Compared withPublished limitsCardEndpoint
SambaNova Cloud (this page) 20 requests per minute, 20 requests per day Not required api.sambanova.ai
Cohere 20 requests per minute Not required api.cohere.ai
Cloudflare Workers AI Published in compute units Not required api.cloudflare.com
Hugging Face Inference Providers Published as a credit balance Not required router.huggingface.co

Models SambaNova Cloud lists as free

  • DeepSeek-V3.1 — DeepSeek, also free at 4 other providers here
  • Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct — Llama, also free at 8 other providers here
  • gpt-oss-120b — gpt-oss, also free at 9 other providers here

9 other providers here also host the gpt-oss family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: GroqCloud, Cloudflare Workers AI, 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, Cloudflare Workers AI, Fireworks AI, IBM watsonx.ai, Together AI, Nebius Token Factory, DeepInfra, Scaleway Generative APIs. 4 other providers here also host the DeepSeek family on free terms, and the terms are not the same: Hugging Face Inference Providers, SiliconFlow, Nebius Token Factory, DeepInfra.

Checking a SambaNova Cloud key

The CORS preflight succeeds but returns no allow-origin header, so a browser refuses to send the Authorization header. That was measured against https://api.sambanova.ai 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

: "${SAMBANOVA_API_KEY:?Set SAMBANOVA_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 $SAMBANOVA_API_KEY" \
  'https://api.sambanova.ai/v1/models'

Using a SambaNova Cloud key

SambaNova Cloud serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.sambanova.ai/v1. Point any client that accepts a custom base URL at it, and let the client read the key from SAMBANOVA_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 = "DeepSeek-V3.1"
model_provider = "sambanova"

[model_providers.sambanova]
name = "SambaNova Cloud OpenAI-compatible gateway"
base_url = "https://api.sambanova.ai/v1"
env_key = "SAMBANOVA_API_KEY"
wire_api = "responses"

Questions about the SambaNova Cloud free tier

Does SambaNova Cloud ask for a credit card?

No. SambaNova Cloud 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 SambaNova Cloud's free-tier rate limits?

SambaNova Cloud publishes 20 requests per minute, 20 requests per day. Those are the numbers in its own documentation as reviewed on 2026-07-25.

What happens when a SambaNova Cloud 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 SambaNova Cloud free tier going away?

Nothing in SambaNova Cloud's own documentation says so as of 2026-07-25. Free Tier is defined by the absence of a linked payment method, so it is reachable without a card. The 20 requests-per-day cap is the binding constraint for most users.

Can SambaNova Cloud be used with Codex, Cline, or Continue?

Yes. SambaNova Cloud serves the OpenAI chat completions protocol at https://api.sambanova.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

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.