SambaNova Cloud
SambaNova Cloud offers very fast inference on Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen and other open models, with free signup credits and community-earnable additional credits.
- Tokens / day
- 20M
- Free credit
- $5
- Card required
- No
SambaNova Cloud scores 6.3/10 for free value in LLM. The main constraint: $5 in free API credits on signup with no credit card; initial credits expire in 30 days. Reported developer/free-tier ceiling around 20M tokens/day across models. Additional credits earnable via the developer community.
Free value score
6.3 / 10Show the math
Key metrics
Models
4 free · 6 totalLimits may be stale — last re-verified outside this section's freshness window.
| Model | Family | AA | Access |
|---|---|---|---|
| MiniMax-M2.7 | MiniMax | 38.1 | free |
| gpt-oss-120b | GPT | 23.8 | free |
| DeepSeek-V3.1 | DeepSeek | 21.1 | free |
| Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct | Llama | — | free |
| DeepSeek-V3.2 | DeepSeek | 24.7 | paid |
| gemma-4-31B-it | Gemma | — | paid |
What you get
$5 free credit at signup, no credit card required
Among the fastest inference speeds for open models
Llama, DeepSeek, Qwen and more via OpenAI-compatible API
Earn extra credits through the developer community
Gotchas
- $5 one-time signup credit
All free-tier users receive exactly $5 in API credits at signup; once exhausted the credits do not renew.
- Card required after credits run out
Once the $5 free credit is exhausted or expires, a credit card must be added to continue using the API under the paid Developer tier.
Sources
-
"Developer tier accounts are limited to 20M tokens per day across all models."
https://docs.sambanova.ai/docs/en/models/rate-limits -
"Free Tier: Applied when there is no payment method linked with your account ... DeepSeek-V3.1 | 20 | 20 | 200000"
https://docs.sambanova.ai/docs/en/models/rate-limits -
"All Developers will get $5 of Free Credit to start testing and building with SambaNova Cloud. That translates to millions of tokens on leading open-source models! Initial credits will expire in 30 days."
https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans -
"DeepSeek V3.2 Exp (Reasoning) scores 25 on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, placing it above average among comparable models (averaging 24)."
https://artificialanalysis.ai/models/deepseek-v3-2-reasoning-0925