CHEAPEST LLM APIS & TOKEN ROUTERS

Many developers get frustrated when calling ':free' models on OpenRouter because popular community checkpoints frequently return 429 'Too Many Requests' errors. The secret is targeting free enterprise-backed models that feature massive dedicated compute clusters.

Most production AI applications overpay for compute by sending every query, regardless of complexity, to the most expensive model. By implementing smart tiered routing, caching static context, and taking advantage of scheduled batch windows, you can slash your monthly API spend by 70% or more.

Each token router serves a distinct budget strategy. OpenRouter is best if you want instant access to 400+ models with unified billing. Cloudflare AI Gateway is best if your app serves repeated requests because its edge caching serves cached prompts for $0. LiteLLM is the best self-hosted, 100% free solution for developers with their own API keys.

OpenRouter provides access to over 30 free models labeled with the ':free' tag. However, brand-new accounts with a $0 balance are capped at 50 requests per day and 20 requests per minute. Depositing just $10 of lifetime credits permanently unlocks 1,000 requests per day across all free models.

Google Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and DeepSeek V4 Flash are currently in a dead heat for the crown of cheapest capable LLM API. Input tokens on these models start as low as $0.075 to $0.14 per million tokens, making them nearly 95% cheaper than flagship models like Claude 4.5 Sonnet or GPT-6.