Resource list to build with LLMs for free
Here's a list of tools to build side projects with LLMs for free.
NOTE: Italicized sources are no credit card needed
Databases
- Free 5GB Postgres via aiven.io: https://aiven.io/free-postgresql-database
- Free 15GB Postgres from xata.io: https://xata.io/blog/postgres-free-tier
- CockroachDB: https://www.cockroachlabs.com/docs/cockroachcloud/quickstart-trial-cluster
Hosting
- Free hosting via Heroku (24 months for free from GitHub Student perks): https://www.heroku.com/github-students
- Render is good: https://render.com/
- Fly.io is dirt cheap also: https://fly.io/docs/about/pricing/
- Free cron jobs via modal.com / ubicloud.com / GitHub Actions / blacksmith.sh (the founders of this are on taro!)
LLM
- Gemini Flash: super generous free tier (1500+ requests/day): https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing
- Gemma 3: https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing#gemma-3 (Best option, 100% free and is very performant)
- Groq: super fast LLM inference: https://groq.com/
- Cerebras but there's a waitlist: https://www.cerebras.ai/inference
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Discussion
(5 comments)- 11
14 days agoTech Lead @ Robinhood, Meta, Course HeroJust wanted to leave a comment saying that this is one of the best threads I've ever seen. Thank you for creating such a valuable resource 🫡
From Taro's experience working with LLMs, compute costs are expensive. I didn't realize so many companies out there are willing to take a loss to foster the next generation of AI builders. This is amazing!
I will add another amazing free AI tool here: https://readdy.ai/
Readdy isn't AI compute, but it should still be useful to anybody building anything as it's a very good AI designer with a generous free tier. Even if you're building a back-end REST API side project or something, you will need to expose some user interface at some point through a set of API docs. We've been using Readdy a lot for Taro, and it's been an absolute game changer.
- 114 days agoMid-level Software EngineerTaro Community
Most of these sources are also no credit card needed. Helps with the peace of mind that I can build consumer facing AI apps without someone hacking it and draining my credits. I was able to finesse parsing over 100M tokens in compute without ever adding my credit card
- 114 days agoMid-level Software EngineerTaro Community
Oooo readdy is great, but I personally prefer v0. It's got a generous free tier and it uses shadcn which im already using. so it makes it very easy to integrate it into my app
- 714 days agoTech Lead/Manager at Meta, Pinterest, Kosei
Epic thread 💯💯
One other thing to note is that almost every hyperscaler will give you 10s of thousands of dollars in credit for their platform if have some sort of vision to build a company (so you shouldn't frame the side project as 'just' a side project).
Relevant thread that covers things like NVIDIA Inception and Azure: https://www.reddit.com/r/SideProject/comments/1g25mhe/getting_cloud_credits_a_short_guide_for/
- 114 days agoMid-level Software EngineerTaro Community
Definitely good point. I updated the thread to indicate sources that donot need a credit card. I also prefer to use serverless free tiers over AWS stuff because its just so easy to get started
