anytimelime — the free AI field report

2026-09-09 · generated by a free model interviewing free models · anytimelime, formerly Project42 · get the engine →

What's free in AI right now — 2026-09-09

Today’s probe scraped 24 OpenRouter “:free” endpoints and only eight cleared the tool‑call gate. The coder‑flavored cohere/north-mini-code:free (1.7s) still hacks a function, while dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:free (1.9s) drops a quick note. The financial flash inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-fin:free and its health‑sante twin inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:freenvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b (0.9s) and codestral-latest (0.5s) still fire tool calls without a credit‑card prompt. The heavyweight aisingapore/Qwen-SEA-LION-v4.5-27B-IT (4.2s) and the surprise lightweight liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free (4.5s) round out the usable set. All other entries either demand payment (SambaNova walls, Nvidia empties) or left us rate‑limited before we could test.

The passing roster is tiny but usable for pipelines that tolerate a 2‑second latency ceiling. Treat the eight survivors like a moving lattice—if one slips behind a paywall tomorrow, the next probe may have fewer or none at all. Keep scripts flexible and re‑run the check before you ship anything that leans on a free model; a missed tool call can break a flow faster than a stale cache.

How to use them with AnytimeLime

Clone the engine from github.com/fusionpoweredsoftware/anytimelime, set LIME_KEY to your OpenRouter key, and run ./lime.sh. It pulls today’s verified roster—cohere/north-mini-code:free, dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:free, inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-fin:free, inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:free, nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b, codestral-latest, aisingapore/Qwen-SEA-LION-v4.5-27B-IT, and liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free—and rotates across them, so no single free tier carries all your traffic. Your key lives on your own machine; the website never asks for it.

If you already have an OpenRouter key, those model IDs work directly with any OpenAI‑compatible client (cURL, LangChain, OpenAI SDK). No AnytimeLime wrapper needed if you prefer to wire it up yourself.

The churn

Free rosters flip weekly—models get gated, die, or resurrect without notice. Today’s eight are tomorrow’s blanks. Re‑probe before you depend on a free model; a single missed tool call can break your flow faster than a stale cache. Keep the scripts adaptive and check the roster regularly.

Today's passing roster

codestral-latest — Mistral · 0.5s · agentic 3/5
nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b — NVIDIA NIM · 0.9s · agentic 3/5
inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-fin:free — openrouter · 1.1s · agentic 3/5
inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:free — openrouter · 1.1s · agentic 3/5
cohere/north-mini-code:free — openrouter · 1.7s · agentic 3/5
dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:free — openrouter · 1.9s · agentic 3/5
aisingapore/Qwen-SEA-LION-v4.5-27B-IT — SEA-LION (AI Singapore) · 4.2s · agentic 3/5
liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free — openrouter · 4.5s · agentic 3/5

The measured table

Click any model for its endpoint and ready-to-run snippets in curl, Python, Go, Rust, and more.

latency	model	vendor	verdict	agentic
0.3	`Sao10K/L3-8B-Stheno-v3.2`	MegaNova AI	FAIL: Connection error: unable to reach the upstream endpoints for 'Sao10K/L3-8B-Sthen	—
0.5	`codestral-latest`	Mistral	PASS (tool)	3/5
0.9	`nvidia/nemotron-3-super-120b-a12b`	NVIDIA NIM	PASS (tool)	3/5
4.2	`aisingapore/Qwen-SEA-LION-v4.5-27B-IT`	SEA-LION (AI Singapore)	PASS (tool)	3/5
0.2	`01-ai/yi-large`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
1.7	`cohere/north-mini-code:free`	openrouter	PASS (tool)	3/5
0.8	`DeepSeek-V3.1`	sambanova	FAIL: A payment method is required. Add one at https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/billin	—
0.2	`adept/fuyu-8b`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
1.9	`dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:free`	openrouter	PASS (tool)	3/5
0.7	`DeepSeek-V3.2`	sambanova	FAIL: A payment method is required. Add one at https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/billin	—
0.1	`ai21labs/jamba-1.5-large-instruct`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
0.3	`google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it:free`	openrouter	FAIL: Provider returned error	—
0.3	`Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct`	sambanova	FAIL: A payment method is required. Add one at https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/billin	—
0.1	`aisingapore/sea-lion-7b-instruct`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
0.2	`google/gemma-4-31b-it:free`	openrouter	FAIL: Provider returned error	—
0.3	`MiniMax-M2.7`	sambanova	FAIL: A payment method is required. Add one at https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/billin	—
0.1	`bigcode/starcoder2-15b`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
1.1	`inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-fin:free`	openrouter	PASS (tool)	3/5
0.3	`MiniMax-M3`	sambanova	FAIL: A payment method is required. Add one at https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/billin	—
0.2	`databricks/dbrx-instruct`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
1.1	`inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:free`	openrouter	PASS (tool)	3/5
0.3	`gemma-4-31B-it`	sambanova	FAIL: A payment method is required. Add one at https://cloud.sambanova.ai/plans/billin	—
0.1	`deepseek-ai/deepseek-coder-6.7b-instruct`	nvidia	FAIL: empty response	—
4.5	`liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free`	openrouter	PASS (tool)	3/5

8 made a tool call, 0 answered in text only, of 24 discovered. Numbers are single-run measurements from one location — your mileage will vary. Prose by cohere/north-mini-code:free; the table is measured, never model-written. Reproduce with ./free-scan.sh from the engine repo.