GitHub Models
LLM 3.8/10Every GitHub account gets free, rate-limited API access to a large catalog of frontier and open models (GPT-5/4.1, Llama, DeepSeek, Grok, Mistral, Cohere, Phi) for prototyping.
GitHub Models scores 3.8/10 for free value in LLM. The main constraint: Free rate-limited access on every GitHub account; per-model request/token caps that vary by Copilot plan (Free tier has the lowest). No card or payment needed to stay on the free quota; usage blocked (not billed) once quota is hit unless you opt into paid usage.
Free value score
3.8 / 10Show the math
Key metrics
Models
30 free · 60 total| Model | Family | AA | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| DeepSeek-R1 | DeepSeek | 20.1 | free |
| gpt-4.1 | GPT | 19.4 | free |
| gpt-4.1-mini | GPT | 16.3 | free |
| Llama-4-Maverick-17B-128E-Instruct-FP8 | Llama | 14.3 | free |
| gpt-4o | GPT | 11.2 | free |
| DeepSeek-V3 | DeepSeek | 10.4 | free |
| Llama-4-Scout-17B-16E-Instruct | Llama | 10 | free |
| Meta-Llama-3.1-405B-Instruct | Llama | 8.5 | free |
| gpt-4.1-nano | GPT | 7.3 | free |
| gpt-4o-mini | GPT | 6.9 | free |
| Codestral-2501 | Mistral | — | free |
| DeepSeek-R1-0528 | DeepSeek | — | free |
| DeepSeek-V3-0324 | DeepSeek | — | free |
| grok-3 | Grok | — | free |
| grok-3-mini | Grok | — | free |
| Llama-3.2-11B-Vision-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| Llama-3.2-90B-Vision-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| MAI-DS-R1 | DeepSeek | — | free |
| Meta-Llama-3-70B-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| Meta-Llama-3-8B-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| Meta-Llama-3.1-70B-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| Meta-Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| Ministral-3B | Mistral | — | free |
| Mistral-large-2407 | Mistral | — | free |
| Mistral-Large-2411 | Mistral | — | free |
| mistral-medium-2505 | Mistral | — | free |
| Mistral-Nemo | Mistral | — | free |
| Mistral-small | Mistral | — | free |
| mistral-small-2503 | Mistral | — | free |
| o3 | GPT | 30.4 | paid |
| o1 | GPT | 23.4 | paid |
| o3-mini | GPT | 19 | paid |
| o1-preview | GPT | 17 | paid |
| gpt-5 | GPT | — | paid |
| gpt-5-chat | GPT | — | paid |
| gpt-5-mini | GPT | — | paid |
| gpt-5-nano | GPT | — | paid |
| o1-mini | GPT | — | paid |
| o4-mini | GPT | — | paid |
What you get
Free for any GitHub account with no card and no payment opt-in required
Single key reaches 40+ models incl. GPT-5/4.1, Llama 4, DeepSeek, Grok 3, Cohere
OpenAI-compatible / Azure AI Inference endpoint, easy drop-in
Usage is blocked rather than billed when the free quota is exhausted
Sources
-
"DeepSeek-R1, DeepSeek-R1-0528, and MAI-DS-R1 have Copilot Free limits of 1 RPM and 8 RPD. The same GitHub table lists separate token-per-request caps."
https://docs.github.com/en/github-models/use-github-models/prototyping-with-ai-models -
"Azure OpenAI o1, o3, and gpt-5 | Requests per minute | Not applicable | 1 | 2 | 2 | Requests per day | Not applicable | 8 | 10 | 12"
https://docs.github.com/en/github-models/use-github-models/prototyping-with-ai-models -
"If you want to develop a generative AI application, you can use GitHub Models to find and experiment with AI models for free. Once you are ready to bring your application to production, opt in to paid usage for your enterprise."
https://docs.github.com/en/github-models/use-github-models/prototyping-with-ai-models -
"GPT-4.1 scored 66.3% on the difficult Diamond tier of questions"
https://www.rdworldonline.com/openai-claims-gpt-4-1-sets-new-90-standard-in-mmlu-reasoning-benchmark/ -
"Claude Fable 5 (Adaptive Reasoning, Max Effort, Opus 4.8 Fallback) currently leads the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index with a score of 60 ... The top AI models by Intelligence Index are: 1. Claude Fable 5 (60), 2. Claude Opus 4.8 (56), 3. GPT-5.5 (xhigh) (55)"
https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/comparisons/gpt-4-1-vs-gpt-4o-2024-08-06