Best offer on record: Free desktop app (LM Studio + Bionic) — unlimited local inference at $0. 4 verified findings, checked 2026-10-22.
Offers
Free desktop app (LM Studio + Bionic) — unlimited local inference at $0 high confidence
Official pricing page (lmstudio.ai/pricing, verified 2026-10-22): Free tier at $0 includes Bionic Agent, running local LLMs via llama.cpp and MLX, offline voice transcription, LM Link for up to 5 devices, and 'limited web search.' The classic LM Studio app also serves an OpenAI-compatible local server on port 1234 (/v1/chat/completions, /v1/embeddings, etc.), so local inference is unlimited and $0. Paid tiers are Bionic+ $20/mo (US-hosted open models: Kimi K3, GLM 5.3, DeepSeek V4 Flash; discounted bulk tokens; full web search + page extraction) and Pro $100/mo (5x usage limits, early access). Cloud models beyond plan allowances are prepaid 'cloud credits' billed per million tokens, roughly $0.13–$15.00/M tokens depending on model (per-model rates, e.g., DeepSeek V4 Flash $0.13 in/$0.26 out; Kimi K3 $3 in/$15 out).
Eligibility
No .edu email, no startup age or funding cap, no application of any kind. No account and no credit card are required for local models or LM Link remote-model use (docs: 'Local and LM Link models do not use Bionic cloud credits, and can be used without an LM Studio account'). Cloud models require a signed-in account with billing set up. No region limits on local use; cloud inference is US-hosted with Zero Data Retention.
How to claim
Download from https://lmstudio.ai/download (homepage link 'Download LM Studio Bionic'). No sign-up for the local workflow. For cloud models: Settings → Account → Sign in, then add credits under Cloud Inference on the LM Studio Hub. Plan changes managed from the dashboard.
Expiry
No expiry — free terms effective since the 2025-07-08 terms change; renewal is automatic (nothing to renew). Free web-search allowance on the Free plan is 'limited' with no published cap; the forthcoming 'Bionic Pass' (announced, pricing unpublished as of Oct 2026) may alter cloud allowances.
Gotchas
Free = software fee only: you still pay for hardware, GPU/RAM, and electricity for local inference. 'Limited web search' cap is not quantified. 'Bionic' public download currently lists Windows; a Linux Bionic build is unconfirmed on LM Studio's own pages (LM Studio proper supports macOS/Windows/Linux, 16GB+ RAM and 4GB+ VRAM recommended). Paid Teams/Enterprise features (SSO, model/MCP gating, private collaboration) are not in the Free tier; team billing is via paid organization credits.
Free for work and school — de-facto free startup/education license (terms change 2025-07-08) high confidence
LM Studio removed the requirement that companies/organizations obtain a separate commercial license. Since 2025-07-08 the app terms allow free use at home, work, school, or anywhere, so startups and academic institutions can adopt it with no procurement, no form, and no license purchase. Fortune 500 companies and universities are already on the paid Enterprise track, but standard app use needs nothing.
Eligibility
Any individual, company, startup, or school — no minimum/maximum company age, no funding cap, no .edu verification, no region limits.
How to claim
Automatic — nothing to claim. Just download the app; the updated app terms apply on use.
Expiry
Indefinite under current terms; no sunset date published.
Gotchas
Covers the app; redistribution/rehosting and team control features (SSO, gating, private collaboration) are the paid Enterprise/Teams boundary. Model licenses (open-weight models downloaded via the app) still need their own license review.
Free public Hub organization for teams (2025-07) medium confidence
Announced alongside the free-for-work change: teams can create a public Hub organization to share LM Studio 'stuff' (models, presets, MCPs, configurations) for free, usable at work or school. Private/team-only sharing of artifacts is the paid boundary ('simple self-serve Teams plan' announced for late 2025; as of the 2026-10 pricing page, teams use centralized billing via organization inference credits and 'Subscription plans for teams [are] coming soon').
Eligibility
Any team size; no funding/age caps stated; no .edu requirement.
How to claim
Create a public Hub organization in the LM Studio Hub (hub.lmstudio.ai / account after signing in).
Expiry
No expiry published for public organizations.
Gotchas
Public orgs are visible; private collaboration, SSO and model/MCP gating are Enterprise (sales-priced, no public rate card).
No startup program, no education license, no trial credits (absence finding) high confidence
There is no dedicated student plan, academic discount, startup credits program, or free trial of cloud inference from LM Studio. The official pricing and enterprise pages carry no education/startup tier. The only free offer is the app itself (unlimited local inference + limited free web search). A third-party tracker (noizz.io, 'LM Studio for Startups', checked 2026-09-23) explicitly states 'No startup program'; hokai.io (checked 2026-10-05) confirms Free/Bionic+($20)/Pro($100) with free local use and no quotas on local runs.
Eligibility
N/A — no program exists to be eligible for. For cloud inference there are no free trial credits; paid prepaid credits are required (cheapest hosted model DeepSeek V4 Flash from ~$0.13/M input tokens).
How to claim
Nothing to claim. Students/startups get the same Free plan as everyone else; the 'free offer' is the app.
Expiry
N/A.
Gotchas
If the expectation was a hosted free tier (like a 12-month startup credit at a cloud GPU provider), it does not exist here — the 'free compute' is the user's own hardware. Cloud overage/egress: prepaid cloud credits, per-model per-token rates, US-hosted ZDR; Bionic Pass pricing unpublished.
No LM Studio program was sunset or removed in 2025–2026; the opposite happened: on 2025-07-08 the paid commercial-license requirement for workplace use was REMOVED (previously: free personal use + separate commercial license for companies), making the app free for startups, schools, and companies. In 2025-07 the free public Hub organization and a paid Teams plan were added; the Bionic agent app launched 2026-07-16 with paid Bionic+ ($20/mo) and Pro ($100/mo) plans plus pay-as-you-go cloud credits, while keeping local inference free and unlimited. Note on task framing: LM Studio has never offered 'GPU / ML training & notebooks — free compute' fronts — it is a local-inference desktop app, not a GPU cloud; 'free compute' means the user's own hardware. The Teams plan is still not fully rolled out: the 2026-10 pricing page says team subscriptions are 'coming soon' with centralized org billing via paid inference credits. No student/education license or startup credit program exists (confirmed by third-party checks 2026-09/10); the free tier + free-for-work terms is the complete free offer.