Category: AI Providers

Google’s free tier just changed twice in quick succession, and both changes matter if you run a website chatbot. First, Gemma 4’s free allowance jumped from 1,500 to 14,400 requests a day — a nearly 10x increase. Then Google dropped in a brand-new model, Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite, at 500 free requests a day.

Here’s what actually changed, and whether either update matters for your site.

The Headline: Gemma 4 Went From 1,500 to 14,400 Free Requests a Day

This is the bigger of the two changes and the one most people missed. Until recently, Gemma 4 sat at 1,500 free requests a day on the Google AI Studio free tier. That was already the best free deal around — roughly 3x what the Flash-Lite models gave you.

Now it’s 14,400 requests a day. That’s almost ten times its old allowance, and close to 29 times what the Gemini Flash-Lite models get at 500. Google essentially turned Gemma 4 from “good free option” into “run a real chatbot on this and never think about the limit again.”

For a self-hosted WordPress chatbot, 14,400 requests a day is more conversation volume than a small or mid-size site will ever touch. You’d have to average a new message every six seconds, around the clock, to exhaust it.

The Second Change: Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite Is Now Free

Alongside the Gemma bump, Google added Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite to the free tier at 500 requests a day — the same allowance the older 3.1 Flash-Lite gets. The model launched with 3.6 Flash and is positioned as a low-latency, cost-efficient workhorse for high-volume tasks.

The “Lite” name means it trades a bit of reasoning depth for speed. For a chatbot, that’s the right trade: a snappy answer usually beats a slightly more considered one. DeepMind calls 3.5 a “huge jump” over 3.1, which is what most free-tier chatbots were running on.

So the Flash-Lite story is simple: same free price as before, noticeably better output. If you were on 3.1 Flash-Lite, switching to 3.5 is a free upgrade.

The Free Tier Lineup Right Now

Model	Free requests / day	Change
Gemma 4 31B	14,400	⬆️ up from 1,500
Gemma 4 26B	14,400	⬆️ up from 1,500
Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite	500	🆕 new model
Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite	500	unchanged
Gemini 3.7 Flash	20	unchanged
Gemini 2.5 Flash	20	unchanged

Which Free Model Should You Use Now?

The Gemma bump changes the default recommendation. Before, you picked between volume (Gemma at 1,500) and quality (Flash-Lite at 500). Now Gemma 4 gives you both the volume and a big enough allowance that the 500-request ceiling on Flash-Lite looks thin by comparison.

Here’s the clean way to decide:

• Gemma 4 (14,400/day) — the default. Enough volume that you never think about limits, and open-weight so your data isn’t trained on. Pick this unless you have a specific reason not to.
• Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite (500/day) — pick this if you want the fastest, most polished responses and your traffic is light enough that 500 requests a day is plenty.

Most sites should now run Gemma 4 and stop there. Flash-Lite is the choice for a low-traffic site where response quality and speed beat the need for headroom.

Switching in a WordPress Chatbot Takes Seconds

If you run YakWP on WordPress, both changes are already live in your settings. YakWP lists every free Gemini model with its daily allowance right next to the name, so you can see the new numbers without looking anything up.

The switch is a two-step change:

1. Go to YakWP settings and confirm the provider is Google Gemini.
2. Open the model dropdown and pick Gemma 4 31B (for volume) or Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite (for speed).

That’s it. No new API key, no billing change, no plugin update. Your existing AIza key from Google AI Studio works as-is. If you don’t have one yet, grab it free at aistudio.google.com/apikey — about 30 seconds, no credit card.

If you’re still deciding whether to self-host a chatbot at all, the BYOK explainer covers the why, and the 5-minute setup guide walks through the install.

What These Changes Don’t Mean

Two caveats so the update doesn’t read as bigger than it is.

The frontier Flash models are still 20 requests a day. 3.6, 3.7, and regular 3.5 Flash remain test-only on the free tier. Google is being generous with Gemma and the Lite line, not the flagship models.

Google still doesn’t publish the free tier as a public table. The per-model limits live in your AI Studio rate-limit panel. The numbers here are from a live panel in August 2026; if yours differ, trust your panel.

Frequently Asked Questions

Did Gemma 4’s free tier really jump to 14,400 requests a day?

Yes. It moved from 1,500 to 14,400 free requests a day, a nearly 10x increase. It’s now the largest free allowance in Google’s lineup by a wide margin.

Is Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite free?

Yes, at 500 requests a day on the Google AI Studio free tier — the same allowance as the older 3.1 Flash-Lite.

Should I use Gemma 4 or Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite for my chatbot?

Gemma 4 for most sites — the 14,400-request allowance removes the limit from the equation. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite if you want the fastest, most polished responses and your traffic fits within 500 requests a day.

Do I need a new API key for either change?

No. Your existing Google AI Studio key works for both Gemma 4 and Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite. Just select the model in your chatbot’s settings.

The Bottom Line

The free tier got meaningfully better this month, and the Gemma jump is the part worth paying attention to. 14,400 free requests a day is enough to run a self-hosted chatbot on a real site for $0, forever, without ever glancing at a usage counter. Gemini 3.5 Flash-Lite is a nice speed upgrade on the side.

If you run WordPress, both are already in YakWP’s model list. See what YakWP includes or grab the free plugin and point it at Gemma 4.

OpenCode Go is a model subscription that costs $5 for your first month. After that it’s $10, and there’s no contract — you can cancel any time. It comes from the team behind OpenCode, and it exists to fix one specific problem: getting reliable access to good AI models without juggling a dozen provider keys.

The pitch is simple. The OpenCode team tests a curated list of open models, benchmarks each one against the provider hosting it, and sells you access to the whole lineup behind a single API key. Five dollars to try it for a full month. No per-token math, no rate-limit roulette, no wondering whether the model you’re calling is still alive.

Here’s what you actually get: every model in the lineup, the exact request limits, and the real numbers on what that five dollars buys.

What OpenCode Go Actually Is

OpenCode Go is a flat-rate subscription. One API key, one endpoint, nineteen open models. It’s the paid companion to the free OpenCode coding agent, but you don’t need the agent to use it — the API is a standard OpenAI-compatible endpoint that plugs into whatever you already run.

OpenCode markets Go toward developers, and the model list is benchmarked for agentic work. But here’s the thing the marketing undersells: these aren’t niche coding models. They’re the same general-purpose large language models people use for everything — writing, chatbots, research, summarization, data extraction, translation, automation. Qwen, GLM, DeepSeek, Kimi, MiniMax. They write code, but they also write articles, answer customer questions, and turn messy data into clean output.

So while the homepage says “coding models,” what you’re really buying is cheap, reliable access to good AI models. What you do with them is up to you.

The Pricing: $5 to Start, Then $10

Your first month is $5. After that, $10 a month. There’s no annual contract, and you can cancel any time.

But the part most people miss is the usage ceiling. The limits are:

• 5-hour limit — $12 of usage
• Weekly limit — $30 of usage
• Monthly limit — $60 of usage

You’re paying $10 a month (after the $5 first month). The monthly usage ceiling is $60. That’s the 6x multiplier OpenCode advertises — they buy reserved GPU capacity and bulk-discounted rates, then pass the savings through. For most models, the math works out to roughly six times what you paid.

Limits are measured in dollar value, not request count, because different models cost different amounts to run. A cheap model like MiMo-V2.5 gives you far more requests than an expensive one like GLM-5.2. Here’s the full table, straight from the docs.

All 19 Models, With Exact Request Limits

Model	Requests / 5h	Requests / week	Requests / month
MiMo-V2.5	30,100	75,200	150,400
DeepSeek V4 Flash	7,600	18,900	37,800
Qwen3.7 Plus	4,300	10,800	21,600
Hy3	4,300	10,750	21,500
DeepSeek V4 Pro	1,050	2,600	5,200
MiniMax M2.7	3,400	8,500	17,000
Qwen3.6 Plus	3,300	8,200	16,300
MiMo-V2.5-Pro	3,250	8,150	16,300
MiniMax M3	3,200	8,000	16,000
GPT 5.6 Luna	2,050	5,100	10,250
Kimi K2.7 Code	1,350	3,380	6,750
Kimi K2.6	1,150	2,880	5,750
GLM-5.2	880	2,150	4,300
GLM-5.1	880	2,150	4,300
GLM-5.3	220	540	1,080
Qwen3.7 Max	340	840	1,690
Qwen3.8 Max	160	400	810
Grok 4.5	120	300	600
Kimi K3	110	250	490

Read that top row again. MiMo-V2.5 gives you 150,000 requests a month, and DeepSeek V4 Flash is right behind at 37,800. For five dollars the first month, then ten. That’s the “cheap model, tons of requests” end of the spectrum, and it’s genuinely hard to exhaust for a solo user.

The expensive end — Grok 4.5 at 600 requests a month, Kimi K3 at 490 — is for when you need a heavy frontier model on a specific task. You don’t run those for everything. You run them when it matters, and the cheap models carry the routine work.

Why Some Models Give You So Few Requests

The 6x multiplier isn’t uniform. OpenCode is honest about this in their docs: for most models, bulk discounts and reserved GPU capacity make the 6x work. For a few — usually new models or ones already priced cheaply by their own provider — OpenCode hasn’t been able to negotiate a better rate, so the multiplier is lower.

Either way, you still get slightly more than paying the model provider directly. The $60 monthly ceiling is the ceiling, not the typical experience. Most people using a mix of cheap and expensive models will land somewhere in the middle and never touch the limit.

Zero Data Retention (For Almost Everything)

The privacy table is short and unusually clean. Out of 19 models, 17 have zero-day data retention — your prompts and responses are not logged and not used for training.

The two exceptions are flagged plainly:

• Grok 4.5 — 30-day retention, and enabling zero-data-retention disables some API features.
• GPT 5.6 Luna — abuse monitoring logs kept up to 30 days.

DeepSeek models have zero-day retention through a monthly-renewed agreement, currently valid through August 31, 2026. If you’re feeding proprietary content into a model, this is the table you should care about, and OpenCode actually publishes it.

Why Cheap, Reliable Model Access Matters for Everyone

If you run a website with an AI feature — a chatbot, a content generator, anything that calls a model — you already know the drill. You bring your own API key. The question is always which model to point it at, and what it costs per request.

If you’re a writer, a freelancer, a small business owner, or anyone who leans on AI for daily work, the same logic applies. You don’t want to think about which provider is throttling you today. You want one key, one price, and models that actually respond when you call them.

This is where the flat-subscription logic pays off. A five-dollar first month for nineteen tested models, with a $60 usage ceiling, beats juggling three free-tier keys that throttle you mid-job. Whether you’re writing content, answering customer questions, or building something that calls an API, predictable flat pricing beats per-token anxiety.

YakWP itself is built on the same philosophy — you own the plugin, you bring your key, there’s no recurring SaaS fee for the widget itself. The missing piece has always been the model access. A cheap flat-fee subscription closes that gap.

How I Use It

My setup routes different tasks to different models. Heavy reasoning goes to DeepSeek V4 Pro or GLM-5.2. High-volume writing, classification, and extraction go to MiMo-V2.5, where the 150K monthly requests mean I stop thinking about limits entirely.

The API is a standard OpenAI-compatible endpoint. Changing a base URL and an API key is the entire integration.

import openai

client = openai.OpenAI(
    base_url="https://opencode.ai/zen/go/v1",
    api_key="your-opencode-go-key",
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="deepseek-v4-pro",  # or deepseek-v4-flash, glm-5.2, qwen3.7-plus...
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarize this document."}],
)

If you’re on OpenCode itself, you run /connect, pick OpenCode Go, paste the key, and /models shows everything available.

Sign up at opencode.ai/go — the first month is $5.

When Not to Bother

Three honest reasons to skip Go:

1. You only need one model. If your entire workload is DeepSeek V4 Flash, you might be fine on a free tier somewhere. Go earns its keep when you want a mix of cheap fast models and expensive frontier models behind one key.
2. You need a specific proprietary model. Go covers open models only. If your workflow is built around Claude or a specific GPT, this isn’t a replacement.
3. You’re already happy with free-tier scavenging. If you don’t mind juggling keys and hitting rate limits, Go is a convenience you don’t need. It’s for people who’d rather pay $5 to try it than think about it.

FAQ

Is OpenCode Go the same as the OpenCode agent?

No. The agent is free and open-source. Go is a separate paid subscription for model access. You can use Go with any OpenAI-compatible client, not just OpenCode.

What happens if I hit the $12 five-hour limit?

Requests get rate-limited until the window resets. Your subscription isn’t cancelled and you’re not charged extra. If you have Zen credits, you can enable “Use balance” and it falls back to your balance instead of blocking.

Do the models get used for training?

For 17 of 19 models, no. Data retention is zero days. Grok 4.5 and GPT 5.6 Luna have the exceptions noted above.

Are these models only for coding?

No. They’re general-purpose models. OpenCode benchmarks them for agentic work, but they handle writing, summarization, translation, chatbots, and data extraction just as well. The “coding” label is about how they’re selected, not what they can do.

How much is the first month?

$5. After the first month it’s $10, and you can cancel any time — there’s no contract.

How do I sign up?

Sign in at opencode.ai/go, subscribe, copy your API key, and point your client at the endpoint above.

The Honest Bottom Line

$5 to try it for a full month. Nineteen tested models, a $60 monthly usage ceiling, and a published zero-retention privacy table. If it’s not for you, cancel before the $10 kicks in and you’ve spent less than a coffee.

If you’ve been fighting free-tier rate limits or juggling three API keys, this is the single subscription that replaces all of that. If you run an AI-powered website, it’s the cheap, predictable model access that makes your own BYOK setup actually affordable. I pay full price for mine and I don’t plan to cancel.

If you want to try it, the first month is $5 through my referral link: opencode.ai/go. It doesn’t cost you anything extra, and it covers a month of my own stack.