Replicate free credits: Free for a limited number of runs

Replicate’s free offer is a limited number of free runs on specific models, with no published dollar amount. The official wording on the try-for-free collection is “free for a limited number of runs.” How many runs is not quantified officially, and to continue past them the official FAQ says to “add a credit card to your account and purchase credit to continue using this or other models on Replicate.” Whether a card is needed to start the free runs themselves is not stated officially. Checked against the official pricing, billing, and try-for-free pages on 2026-08-21.

The circulating $5 and $10 claims, corrected

Third-party posts often claim Replicate gives “$5 free credit” or “$10 free credit” at signup. As of 2026-08-21, neither figure appears on any official Replicate page. The official offer is the limited free runs described above, scoped to the models in the try-for-free collection. If you see a dollar figure attached to Replicate’s free tier, it did not come from Replicate.

How billing works after the free runs

Replicate is prepaid: you “add a payment method” and buy credit, and work stops at a $0 balance. Purchased credit is “valid for 1 year from the purchase date and is not refundable.” Auto-reload has a minimum threshold of $5 and a minimum reload of $15. Public models are billed either per output or per second of active processing; setup and idle time on public models are not billed.

Scope caveats

The free runs apply to listed models, not the whole catalog. Commercial use depends on each model’s license, which is a per-model check, not a platform-wide grant of rights.

What I have done with it

Not tested yet. I have not personally counted how many free runs a new account gets, and no official page quantifies it, so this entry stays at the official wording.

For a free offer with an actual usable dollar figure on an inference API, see Fireworks AI’s $1 credit. For a neighboring platform whose free credits exist but cannot be used through the API at all, see fal.ai. Every grant I track is on the credits index.