Azure OpenAI Service today
Price
Not found
- Contract
- Not found
- Free plan
- Trial: Free trial available for Azure; duration not stated
Free plan, which Azure OpenAI Service doesn't show (4)
A free plan you can keep, in the vendor's own words.
| Alternative | Starts at | Against Azure OpenAI Service | States that Azure OpenAI Service doesn't | Contract | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 Hugging Face Inference ProvidersPRO, read Oct 29, 2026 |
$9/moPRO plan, starting price | Not comparable | SSO, Public API | Not found | Free Hub account with unlimited public models, datasets and apps; CPU Basic... |
 Cloudflare Workers AIread Oct 29, 2026 |
$0.011/1,000 NeuronsUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Tool and function calling, Public API | Not found | 10,000 Neurons per day free; beyond that, upgrade to Workers Paid |
 Google Gemini APIread Oct 29, 2026 |
$0.30/1M input tokensUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Streaming responses, Tool and function calling, No training on your data and 2 more | Not found | Free tier with free input and output tokens, limited access to certain... |
 Google Vertex AIread Oct 29, 2026 |
$0.085/vCPU-hourUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Public API | Not found | Agent Compute includes 50 free hours, Agent Memory 100 free GiB-hours, and... |
Other options (7)
No computed reason to switch, listed for completeness.
| Alternative | Starts at | Against Azure OpenAI Service | States that Azure OpenAI Service doesn't | Contract | Free plan |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
 xAI APIGrok Plus (app subscription), read Oct 29, 2026 |
$8/moGrok Plus (app subscription) plan, starting price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, SOC 2 compliance, SOC 2, SSO and 2 more | Not found | Not found |
 Anthropic Claude APIPro, read Oct 29, 2026 |
$20/moPro plan, starting price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, No training on your data, Discounted batch processing, SSO and 2 more | Enterprise is annual only; Pro and Team can be monthly or annual | Not found |
 AI/ML APIread Oct 29, 2026 |
$20/minimum top upUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, No training on your data, Public API, MCP server | Not found | Not found |
 Basetenread Oct 29, 2026 |
$1.40/1M input tokensUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Streaming responses, SOC 2 compliance, SOC 2 and 3 more | Not found | Trial: New accounts come with free credits; duration not stated |
 DeepInfraread Oct 29, 2026 |
$0.06/1M input tokensUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Streaming responses, Tool and function calling, SOC 2 compliance and 3 more | no long-term contracts | Not found |
 DigitalOcean Gradient AIread Oct 29, 2026 |
$0.05/M tokensUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Discounted batch processing, Public API | Not found | Trial: $5 free credit valid for 90 days (example given) |
 OpenAI APIread Oct 29, 2026 |
$0.10/1M tokensUsage price | Not comparable | Pay-per-token pricing, Streaming responses, SOC 2 compliance, No training on your data and 4 more | Not found | Not found |
No price found, or contact sales (3)
- Cerebras Inferencehybrid
- DeepSeek APIcontact the vendor
- Groqcontact the vendor
Questions
Is there a free alternative to Azure OpenAI Service?
Yes. 4 AI API platforms have a free plan, including Hugging Face Inference Providers, Cloudflare Workers AI, Google Gemini API, Google Vertex AI.
How this page is made
Alternatives come from Azure OpenAI Service's own category, AI API platforms. Prices come from each vendor's pricing page and are compared at the same volume where both can be computed, and by starting price where neither can. "States that Azure OpenAI Service doesn't" lists what we found on the other vendor's site and didn't find on Azure OpenAI Service's, which doesn't prove Azure OpenAI Service lacks it. How prices are read.