anytimelime — the free AI field report

2026-09-15 · generated by a free model interviewing free models · anytimelime, formerly Project42 · get the engine →

What's free in AI right now — 2026-09-15

The morning’s highlight is the churn of tool‑call status. Three new free models—inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:free, inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-vl:free and liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free—joined the ranks of OpenRouter’s “free” gate, while three that were handy yesterday (cohere/north-mini-code:free, openai-fast and the Nvidia nemotron‑3‑super‑120b‑a12b) dropped their tool capability. Nothing broke out of the OpenRouter bubble for the first time, so the ecosystem stays tightly bound to that wall.

Today’s free standouts

If you need a quick note, dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:free still delivers a concise summary in 1.7 s and works with tools. The three inclusionai flashes are the sub‑second workhorses: finance (ling‑3.0‑flash‑fin:free at 0.9 s), health (ling‑3.0‑flash‑sante:free at 0.9 s) and vision (ling‑3.0‑flash‑vl:free at 1.2 s). The liquid model (lfm‑2.5‑2.6b:free) is a slower but tool‑ready 3‑second option that gives a different flavor of reasoning. The only non‑OpenRouter free model that still talks is SambaNova’s deepseek‑ai/deepseek‑v4‑flash‑0731—a 9.6‑second heavyweight that still accepts tools, though it’s a lonely outlier behind a pay‑wall for most of the SambaNova lineup. Finally, openai‑fast (Pollinations) is free and text‑only, so it’s good for quick token shoveling but not for structured calls.

Tech Talk Tuesday — 2026-09-14 to 2026-09-15

This week’s tool‑call ledger reads like a roller coaster. Gains: inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:free, inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-vl:free and liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:free all turned their tool‑call lights on. Losses: cohere/north-mini-code:free (once a coder’s go‑to), openai-fast (the weak text‑only Pollinations endpoint) and Nvidia’s nemotron‑3‑super‑120b‑a12b vanished from the tool‑capable list. For builders, the week reinforces that the “free” tier is a shifting patchwork of OpenRouter wrappers; a tool‑ready model can disappear overnight, and a new one can appear just as fast. Keep rotating your calls, and don’t bet on any single `:free` endpoint for mission‑critical pipelines.

This week’s deep dig

The earlier speculation about hidden keyless gateways (Groq, Cerebras, Cloudflare, Chinese stacks) remains largely untested by today’s measured probe. The only non‑OpenRouter free model still usable is the SambaNova deepseek flash, and the community “AnytimeLime Endpoint” network is still empty. In short, the frontier of free, tool‑capable models stays a tightly guarded OpenRouter sandbox, with occasional surprises that are quickly tucked back behind paywalls or empty responses.

If you want to keep the churn under your own control, clone github.com/fusionpoweredsoftware/anytimelime, set LIME_KEY to an OpenRouter key, and run ./lime.sh. It pulls today’s verified roster, rotates across the passing models, and never leaks your key.

Today's passing roster

The measured table

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

latencymodelvendortool callfree nowagenticyesterday3 days agoa week ago
2.3openai-fastPollinationstext-onlyFREE—···
0.201-ai/yi-largenvidiauntestedDOWN—✗✗✗
1.4cohere/north-mini-code:freeopenrouteryesFREE3/5✓✗✓
0.3DeepSeek-V3.1sambanovauntestedCARD—✗✗✗
0.2adept/fuyu-8bnvidiauntestedDOWN—✗✗✗
1.7dots-studio/dots-3-note-preview:freeopenrouteryesFREE3/5✓✗✓
0.3DeepSeek-V3.2sambanovauntestedCARD—✗✗✗
0.2ai21labs/jamba-1.5-large-instructnvidiauntestedDOWN—✗✗✗
0.2google/gemma-4-26b-a4b-it:freeopenrouteryes (past)DOWN—✗✗✗
0.3Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-InstructsambanovauntestedCARD—✗✗✗
0.1aisingapore/sea-lion-7b-instructnvidiauntestedDOWN—✗✗✗
0.2google/gemma-4-31b-it:freeopenrouteryes (past)DOWN—✗✗✗
0.3MiniMax-M2.7sambanovauntestedCARD—✗✗✗
0.1bigcode/starcoder2-15bnvidiauntestedDOWN—✗✗✗
0.9inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-fin:freeopenrouteryesFREE3/5✓✗✓
0.2MiniMax-M3sambanovauntestedCARD—✗✗✗
0.1databricks/dbrx-instructnvidiauntestedDOWN—·✗✗
0.9inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-sante:freeopenrouteryesFREE3/5·✗✓
0.3gemma-4-31B-itsambanovauntestedCARD—·✗✗
0.1deepseek-ai/deepseek-coder-6.7b-instructnvidiauntestedDOWN—···
1.2inclusionai/ling-3.0-flash-vl:freeopenrouteryesFREE3/5···
0.3gpt-oss-120bsambanovauntestedCARD—✗·✗
9.6deepseek-ai/deepseek-v4-flash-0731nvidiayesFREE3/5✓··
3.0liquid/lfm-2.5-2.6b:freeopenrouteryesFREE3/5···

7 made a tool call, 1 answered in text only, of 24 discovered. A fail only means the endpoint wasn't free to use right then — it demanded a payment method, or it was down or erroring — so tool-call ability stayed untested, not disproven; a model that passed in a past report keeps its yes. 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.