Best offer on record: GroqCloud Free Plan (ongoing free tier). 3 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
GroqCloud Free Plan (ongoing free tier) high confidence
Genuinely free, rate-limited inference on open models (gpt-oss-120b/20b, qwen3.8-27b, Whisper, TTS, safety classifiers), no subscription. Per-model limits from the official table as of 2026-10-22: openai/gpt-oss-120b and openai/gpt-oss-20b: 30 RPM / 1,000 RPD / 8,000 TPM / 200,000 TPD; openai/gpt-oss-safeguard-20b: 3 RPM / 1,000 RPD / 2,000 TPM / 200K TPD; qwen/qwen3.8-27b: 30 RPM / 1,000 RPD / 8K TPM / 200K TPD; whisper-large-v3 and whisper-large-v3-turbo: 20 RPM / 2,000 RPD / 7.2K audio-sec/hr / 28.8K audio-sec/day; meta-llama/llama-prompt-guard-2-22m and -86m: 30 RPM / 14,400 RPD / 15K TPM / 500K TPD; canopylabs/orpheus-v1-english and -arabic-saudi (TTS): 10 RPM / 100 RPD / 1.2K TPM / 3.6K TPD. Limits apply at the organization level (all keys in an org share one pool); cached tokens do not count; exceeding any limit returns HTTP 429 with a retry-after header and x-ratelimit-remaining-* headers. Docs call the table a high-level summary — the org's exact limits live on the Limits page in console settings.
Eligibility
Open to anyone (students and startups alike) with a GroqCloud account; email or GitHub sign-in; one free account per person. No .edu email, no funding/age cap, no referral, no approval step. No region limit is documented. A credit card is NOT required for the free plan — the official community help center states free signup gives immediate free-tier access 'without requiring a credit card', and the Billing FAQ only requires a payment method (credit card, US bank account, or SEPA debit) when UPGRADING to the Developer tier.
How to claim
1) Sign up at console.groq.com (email or GitHub) — you start on the $0 Free plan automatically, no card. 2) Open the API Keys page (console.groq.com/keys), create a key, store it as GROQ_API_KEY. 3) Call the OpenAI-compatible endpoint https://api.groq.com/openai/v1/chat/completions with a model ID such as openai/gpt-oss-120b or qwen/qwen3.8-27b. Higher limits require upgrading to the Developer plan (paid, pay-per-token, progressive billing thresholds at $1/$10/$100/$500/$1,000 cumulative; can downgrade to Free at any time after settling the final invoice).
Expiry
No expiry: the free plan is ongoing and refills daily within its per-model limits. No renewal needed. Note the catalog changes frequently (models are deprecated on a rolling basis — see sunset_notes), so 'free tier' content drifts even while the plan itself is permanent.
Gotchas
(1) Llama chat models (llama-3.1-8b-instant, formerly ~14,400 RPD; llama-3.3-70b-versatile) are NOT on the free tier as of Aug 16, 2026 — they are enterprise-only; the 14,400-RPD figure now belongs to the llama-prompt-guard safety classifiers, not general chat. (2) The 8,000 TPM cap binds long before 1,000 RPD for long prompts — one ~6K-token request consumes a whole minute's quota. (3) TPD on gpt-oss models is 200K = ~200 tokens/request average across 1,000 requests. (4) Limits are org-wide: one busy script burns the quota for all teammates/keys. (5) Upgrading to Developer requires adding a card/bank/SEPA payment method; if you only need free usage, do not upgrade or a small bill can appear. (6) A promo-code redemption page exists (Settings > Billing > Promo) where free credits can be redeemed, but there is no standing public free-credit promotion; the 'Groq for Startups' $10K program that used to provide credits was unpublished (see sunset_notes). (7) Preview models (e.g., qwen3.8-27b is listed as Preview in some sources) can be discontinued at short notice. (8) Groq's Service Credit Terms (eff. 2025-10-15) cap any prepaid/promo credits at 1 year from issuance.
Groq for Startups ($10,000 API credits) — SUNSET medium confidence
Former startup program: $10,000 in GroqCloud API credits granted to the account (not a code), expiring 90 days after grant, approval at Groq's discretion; no published funding cap, founding-date cutoff, or VC-referral requirement — the form asked for a working product/use case and an expected inference-volume estimate. The program page groq.com/groq-for-startups no longer publishes the offer (as of 2026-10-22 it serves a generic marketing page with no program content, funding announcement, or application form), and console.groq.com/docs/startups returns 404 per third-party checks. Multiple independent trackers (Perkstack, checked 2026-08-05; guptadeepak.com, checked 2026-10-10; PerkBook) recorded the program as unpublished/removed on 5 August 2026 with no closure notice from Groq. Not claimable today.
Eligibility
Before it closed: early-stage AI companies/startups with a GroqCloud account and a genuine use case; stages Bootstrapped through Series A per trackers; no partner referral required. Now: nobody — the application form is gone.
How to claim
No longer claimable. Historical flow: create a GroqCloud account, complete the application at groq.com/groq-for-startups describing the startup, use case and expected inference volume; on approval, $10K landed on the account and the 90-day clock started. Do not rely on third-party directories still listing this offer as live.
Expiry
Unpublished as of 2026-08-05 (tracker-recorded date; Groq published no formal closure notice). Any previously granted credits follow the 90-day-from-issuance program window, not the 1-year default in the Service Credit Terms.
Gotchas
The dead program still appears in several 'free AI credits' aggregators with the old $10K/90-day terms — treat those listings as stale. The console's promo-code page (Settings > Billing > Promo) remains the only live credit-redemption mechanism, and no public startup-credit promotion is currently linked to it. Successor options in the same niche per trackers: Fireworks for Startups, Together AI for Startups (up to $50K), Baseten for Startups (up to $25K + $2.5K APIs).
Groq education / student program — none exists medium confidence
There is no Groq student discount, education license, or academic-access program as of 2026-10-22. The student/academic route is simply the cardless Free plan: the official rate-limit and billing documentation contains no education, .edu-verification, or academic-program reference, and independent verification (Noizz, 2026-09-04 check of Groq's docs) confirms 'no student, academic, education or research programme is mentioned anywhere in Groq's rate-limit or billing documentation.'
Eligibility
N/A — nothing to qualify for. Students use the standard Free plan (open to anyone, no .edu required, no card).
How to claim
Nothing to claim. A student claiming 'Groq free access' means the same no-card Free plan: sign up at console.groq.com, create a key, call the OpenAI-compatible endpoint under the per-model limits.
Expiry
N/A.
Gotchas
Do not expect a .edu discount on the paid Developer plan; if an education offer ever appears it would likely surface as a promo code (Settings > Billing > Promo), but none is publicly published today.
2025-2026 changes to watch: (1) Groq for Startups ($10K credits, 90-day validity) was unpublished on 2026-08-05 — the program URL now serves a generic marketing page and the docs page 404s; no closure notice was published. (2) llama-3.1-8b-instant and llama-3.3-70b-versatile were shut down for Free and Developer tiers on 2026-08-16 (enterprise committed-spend customers kept them) — this killed the '~14,400 RPD llama-3.1-8b' free-tier figure that earlier trackers (including this task's 'known so far') still cite; today's official table's 14,400-RPD row is for llama-prompt-guard safety classifiers. (3) groq/compound and groq/compound-mini were deprecated and decommissioned on 2026-09-21. (4) qwen/qwen3.6-27b was deprecated on 2026-09-14 in favor of qwen/qwen3.8-27b. (5) Other 2026 deprecations per Groq's deprecations page: Llama Guard 4 12B (2026-03-05, replaced by gpt-oss-safeguard-20b), Llama 4 Maverick 17B (2026-03-09), Kimi K2 (2026-04-15), Qwen 3 32B and Llama 4 Scout 17B (2026-07-17). (6) No education/student program or trial-credit offer exists; only a generic promo-code redemption page in the console. Bottom line: one genuinely free, cardless, ongoing offer (the Free plan above) plus a sunset $10K startup program whose terms still circulate in stale third-party listings.
Critic corrections
No-card free plan: gpt-oss-120b & qwen-3.8-27b at 30 RPM / 1,000 RPD / 8K TPM / 200K TPD: Groq's rate-limit page shows these exact values under Developer Plan Limits and says the table gives the Developer plan's base limits. No free-plan table was captured, so the free-plan figures and the no-card claim are not supported by this page.