The short answer
Tools compared15
- Lowest starting price
- $8 · xAI API
- Free plans
- 6 of 15
- Prices published
- 11 of 15
- Sales-led only
- 0
AI API platforms at a glance
Median starting price$9/mo3 with a public price
Free plan40%27% offer a time-limited trial
Buy online87%Sign up and pay without a sales call
Sales only0%Demo or contact sales to buy
How they charge
Every AI API platform, side by side
| Tool | Starts at | Usage price | Free plan | How you buy | Checks | Checked |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 xAI API |
$8/mo | $2/minute | Yes | Both | 3/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Hugging Face Inference Providers |
$9/mo | – | Yes | Both | 1/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Anthropic Claude API |
$17/mo yearly | $10/minute | Yes | Both | 4/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 AI/ML API |
– | $20/minute | – | Both | 3/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Azure OpenAI Service |
– | – | – | Both | 2/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Baseten |
– | $1.40/minute | – | Both | 5/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Cerebras Inference |
– | – | – | Both | 5/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Cloudflare Workers AI |
– | $0.01/1,000 neurons | Yes | Both | 4/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 DeepInfra |
– | $0.06/minute | – | Both | 6/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
| DeepSeek API | – | – | – | – | 0/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 DigitalOcean Gradient AI |
– | $0.05/minute | – | Both | 3/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Google Gemini API |
– | $0.30/minute | Yes | Both | 6/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Google Vertex AI |
– | $0.09/vcpu-hour | Yes | Both | 3/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 Groq |
– | – | – | – | 0/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
 OpenAI API |
– | $10/minute | – | Both | 6/8 | Oct 29, 2026 |
The tools
xAI APISpaceXSI sells API access to its Grok models for text, code, image, video and voice, billed per token and per unit of media.$8 /moHugging Face Inference ProvidersHugging Face is a platform for hosting and sharing machine learning models, datasets and apps, with paid compute and enterprise plans.$9 /moAnthropic Claude APIAnthropic builds the Claude AI models and sells them through chat apps, Claude Code, and a pay-per-token API on the Claude Platform.$17 /moAI/ML APIAI/ML API is a single API and billing account for hundreds of AI models and agent tools from many providers, sold at no markup on provider prices.$20 /minuteAzure OpenAI ServiceMicrosoft Foundry is an Azure platform for building, grounding and governing AI apps and agents, with access to many third-party and Microsoft models.QuoteBasetenBaseten is an inference platform for running open-source, custom and fine-tuned AI models, with pre-optimized Model APIs, dedicated GPU deployments and training.$1.40 /minuteCerebras InferenceCerebras sells fast AI inference on its own wafer-scale chips, through a cloud API and on-premise systems.QuoteCloudflare Workers AIWorkers AI runs AI models on Cloudflare's network through one API call, billed per use.$0.01 /1,000 neuronsDeepInfraDeepInfra is an inference API that serves 100+ open and third-party models, billed per token or by execution time, plus rented GPUs.$0.06 /minuteDEDeepSeek APIDeepSeek offers a chat app, a desktop Harness app, and an API platform built on its own DeepSeek models.QuoteDigitalOcean Gradient AIDigitalOcean is a cloud platform offering inference, agent runtimes, GPUs and general cloud infrastructure.$0.05 /minuteGoogle Gemini APIGoogle's Gemini Developer API gives developers access to Gemini, Imagen, Veo and other models via an API key, with a free tier and pay-per-token paid tiers.$0.30 /minuteGoogle Vertex AIGoogle Cloud platform for building and deploying AI agents and apps with Gemini, third-party and open models, plus ML training and MLOps tools.$0.09 /vcpu-hourGroqGroq runs an AI inference cloud (GroqCloud) built on its own LPU chips.QuoteOpenAI APIOpenAI sells API access to its GPT models, plus image, voice and tool services, billed per token.$10 /minuteHow this list is made
Every price is read from the vendor's own pricing page on the date shown and tied to the line it came from. Tools are ordered by what they cost at a typical volume, then by starting price. No one pays to be listed or ranked.