---
title: "Lightning AI Model APIs / litAI free inference"
description: "$15 in credits refresh on a published schedule. See verified limits, model IDs, privacy terms, and primary sources for Lightning AI Model APIs / litAI."
canonical_url: "https://freeinferencing.com/provider/lightning_ai_model_apis/"
md_url: "https://freeinferencing.com/provider/lightning_ai_model_apis.md"
last_updated: "2026-09-19"
---

# Lightning AI Model APIs / litAI

> $15 in credits refresh on a published schedule.

## Classification

- **Directory:** Current
- **Free access:** Monthly credits
- **Status:** Available now
- **Confidence:** High
- **Payment card:** No
- **Account:** Required
- **Equivalent paid value:** At least $15.00/mo
- **API endpoint:** `https://lightning.ai/api/v1`

## Models mentioned

- `anthropic/claude-fable-5`
- `anthropic/claude-haiku-4-5-20251001`
- `anthropic/claude-opus-4-5-20251101`
- `anthropic/claude-opus-4-6`
- `anthropic/claude-opus-4-7`
- `anthropic/claude-opus-4-8`
- `anthropic/claude-opus-5`
- `anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-5-20250929`
- `anthropic/claude-sonnet-4-6`
- `anthropic/claude-sonnet-5`
- `google/gemini-2.5-flash`
- `google/gemini-2.5-flash-lite-preview-06-17`
- `google/gemini-2.5-pro`
- `google/gemini-3-flash-preview`
- `google/gemini-3.1-flash-lite-preview`
- `google/gemini-3.1-pro-preview`
- `google/gemini-3.5-flash`
- `lightning-ai/Qwen3.8-27B`
- `lightning-ai/deepseek-v4-pro`
- `lightning-ai/gemma-4-31B-it`
- `openai/gpt-3.5-turbo`
- `openai/gpt-4`
- `openai/gpt-4-turbo`
- `openai/gpt-4-turbo-preview`
- `openai/gpt-4.1`
- `openai/gpt-4o`
- `openai/gpt-5`
- `openai/gpt-5-mini`
- `openai/gpt-5-nano`
- `openai/gpt-5.2-2025-12-11`
- `openai/gpt-5.4-2026-03-05`
- `openai/gpt-5.4-mini-2026-03-17`
- `openai/gpt-5.4-nano-2026-03-17`
- `openai/gpt-5.5-2026-04-23`
- `openai/gpt-5.6-luna`
- `openai/gpt-5.6-sol`
- `openai/gpt-5.6-terra`
- `openai/gpt-6-astra`
- `openai/o3`
- `openai/o3-mini`

## Limits and terms

```yaml
advertised_model_api_tokens_per_month: 30000000
requests_per_minute: 15
tokens_per_minute: 120000
separate_platform_credits_usd_per_month: 15
reset: Free platform balance is topped up to $15 on the first of each month and
  does not accumulate.
caveat: Public pages do not fully reconcile the 30M-token promise with
  token-priced litAI calls and the separate $15 balance; the signed-in billing
  page is authoritative.
```

## What happens to your prompts?

**Partially private.** Model-API retention, training, publisher access, and plan-specific protections are not documented fully.

Privacy is audited separately from price. Review the current governing terms before sending sensitive or regulated data.

## Data governance and agreements

```yaml
data_governance:
  review_status: partial
  plan_scope: Lightning AI platform and hosted Model APIs; model publishers and
    deployed applications can add separate terms.
  prompt_retention: No Model-API-specific content retention period was found in
    the public legal or product documentation.
  response_retention: not_documented
  ordinary_logging: Platform account, use, diagnostic, and security information
    may be collected; content logging is not clearly separated.
  model_training: No plan-specific commitment excluding free Model API inputs and
    outputs from training was found.
  product_improvement: General platform information may be used to operate and
    improve services; the treatment of inference content is unclear.
  human_or_operator_access: Lightning and the publisher/operator of a model
    endpoint may technically process content; no universal operator-access
    limitation is published.
  subprocessors_and_routing: Requests run on Lightning infrastructure and can
    target third-party-published models or apps, creating a separate publisher
    trust boundary.
  deletion_controls: General account/privacy rights exist, but no per-request
    content deletion or TTL was found.
  caveat: Security and general legal policies do not establish a uniform privacy
    contract for every community Model API.
agreements:
  terms_of_service: https://lightning.ai/terms-of-service
  privacy_policy: https://lightning.ai/privacy-policy
```

## Eligibility

```yaml
account_required: true
payment_method_required: false
phone_verification_required: true
country_availability_applies: true
one_free_account_per_person: true
```

## API compatibility and modalities

- **Compatibility:** OpenAI Chat Completions, Litai
- **Modalities:** Text generation


## Before you build with Lightning AI Model APIs / litAI

### Read the classification narrowly

This record describes the bounded offer supported by evidence on 2026-09-19; it does not guarantee permanence, production suitability, uptime, latency, model quality, or access from every account and region. “Monthly credits” should be interpreted together with the Current directory placement, High confidence, No payment-card status, and the plan-specific sources below.

### Resolve the live model route

The snapshot records 40 model IDs. Match the exact ID against the provider's current catalog before using it in code because zero-price routes, aliases, context limits, and feature support can rotate while an older documentation page remains online.

### Match the quota to the workload shape

Translate the allowance into peak requests per minute, input and output tokens, concurrency, retries, and every daily or monthly ceiling that applies to the intended account. The first limit reached by the workload is the practical ceiling. A large token pool can still fail interactive bursts, and a high request limit can still fail long-context work. Include tool calls and retry traffic, test the largest realistic payload, and treat research, experimental, and community access as conditional on their eligibility and fair-use terms.

### Preserve billing and privacy boundaries

The recorded payment-card requirement is No, and account access is required. Confirm both in the live signup flow, set provider-side budgets when charges are possible, and observe the balance or usage fields after a complete request. The prompt-handling classification is **Partially private** because Model-API retention, training, publisher access, and plan-specific protections are not documented fully. Re-read the terms for the exact route and plan before sending sensitive, regulated, or proprietary content.

### Follow the evidence, then re-check it

This record links 11 first-party sources covering the offer, catalog, limits, pricing, terms, privacy, or adoption evidence available to the audit. Prefer the newest and most specific governing document or live catalog when sources disagree. A dated finding can become stale even when the page remains online, so retain the source and snapshot that supported the decision and submit a correction when a provider changes a material term.

### Plan fallback without policy drift

A fallback should preserve modality, context length, streaming, structured output, tools, safety controls, and data terms, not only API syntax. Decide which errors may retry, cap retry storms, and prevent an exhausted free route from silently switching to a billable model. Rotating aliases and free pools can change behavior without changing the endpoint, so retain the response model field and test at least one substitute route before the primary offer becomes unavailable.

### Monitor the offer as a dependency

Capture the model ID, response model, rate-limit headers, usage fields, latency, HTTP status, and provider request identifier. Watch authorization failure, quota exhaustion, catalog removal, policy revision, and balance movement as separate failure modes. Re-check the live catalog and governing sources on a schedule proportionate to the workload's importance, and keep an owner and exit path for any production dependency on volatile free capacity.

### Test one complete request before scaling

Start with the smallest permitted request using the exact credential, model ID, endpoint, region, and account type intended for deployment. Record the status, headers, usage fields, response model, latency, and dashboard balance movement. Then exercise an invalid model, quota exhaustion, or rate limit so failure is explicit and cannot silently switch to a paid route. Validate streaming, structured output, and tool calls separately because a free model can expose fewer features than its paid counterpart. Keep a budget ceiling outside the application whenever billing is possible, and do not send sensitive data until the observed route matches the reviewed agreement.

## Primary sources

- [Model APIs](https://lightning.ai/docs/overview/model-apis): Official Docs
- [Model API catalog](https://lightning.ai/api/v1/models): Official Catalog
- [Lightning pricing](https://lightning.ai/pricing): Official Pricing
- [Account creation and free-credit eligibility](https://lightning.ai/docs/platform/overview/faq/create-account): Official Docs
- [Billing](https://lightning.ai/docs/overview/faq/billing): Official Docs
- [Lightning AI Terms of Service](https://lightning.ai/terms-of-service): Official Terms
- [Lightning AI Privacy Policy](https://lightning.ai/privacy-policy): Official Privacy
- [Lightning AI and Voltage Park complete merger (over 400,000 developers, startups and enterprises), 2026-01-21](https://www.businesswire.com/news/home/20260121371691/en/Lightning-AI-and-Voltage-Park-Complete-Merger-to-Create-the-First-Cloud-Built-for-AI): Company Press Release
- [PyPI download stats for the lightning package](https://pypistats.org/api/packages/lightning/recent): Package Registry Stats
- [PyPI download stats for the litai Model APIs SDK](https://pypistats.org/api/packages/litai/recent): Package Registry Stats
- [PyTorch Lightning framework by Lightning AI](https://lightning.ai/pytorch-lightning/): Official Product

## Sitemap

See the full [semantic sitemap](/sitemap.md) for every page and markdown mirror.