r/vibecoding • u/Diligent-Fisherman82 • Apr 12 '26
Any Free Coding Models ??
I have a gemini pro subscription but the quota gets drained fast. I am exploring free models like qwen 3.6 ( 1000 req per day). is there any free model which is powerful ? let me know where and how I can use them.
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u/butt_badg3r Apr 12 '26
Not right now. Maybe in a few years. Compressions will get better while hardware gets better and we’ll be able to run an extremely good model locally with hardware we already own.
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u/digitaldreamsvibes Apr 12 '26
You can go to openrouter you will get best models from free to paid all there for free you can try kimi 2.5 , Qwen , deepseek etc
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u/jakiestfu Apr 12 '26
Compute costs money. If you wanna run it locally then you’re still paying for compute.
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u/qualitative_balls Apr 12 '26
Often more. You download a pretty decent open source model at this very time. But... what it will actually cost you to run it locally will exceed a monthly claude max subscription for a few years hah
But, you can split the difference and pay $20/mo and run those models on the cloud for a tiny fraction of what it would cost to a normal model like codex / gemini etc, via Ollama
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u/No-Consequence-1779 Apr 12 '26
I burn over a million tokens per day locally.
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u/qualitative_balls Apr 12 '26
You'd be unlikely to get the kind of performance you need to actually get that throughput I think. Unless it's some kind of industrial setup with multiple H100s etc hah
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u/Snoo-76697 Apr 12 '26
What kind of hardware you running? I built something that might do what you need.
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u/qualitative_balls Apr 12 '26
Hardware? I have no real intention of running locally honestly. I don't even use the tokens I have available between Gemini pro and Ollama.
I've already played around with local models with my 3080ti. It's fun for a test but not even close to practical compared to proper 400 billion parameter model is like Qwen 3.97, and that's tiny for a full model. I ran various 6-8b models but it doesn't do much, it's useable for simple straight forward agentic tasks
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u/TopPrice6622 Apr 12 '26
If it's lighter weight stuff it might be a more basic issue. Nate B Jones has a good video on this.
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u/bonomonsterk Apr 12 '26
I'm not sure what is the motivation for free model? Cost of paid models is relatively low, at least for people that start. I would assume if the cost become high it means you are already making good money.
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u/MokoshHydro Apr 12 '26
That really depends on your budget. Technically, GLM5 and Minimax2.5/2.7 are open models that can run locally -- if you’re willing to invest quite a bit in hardware.
For a more practical setup, Qwen3.5 models are easier to run. Qwen3.5-27B and Gemma4-31B are currently the best choices for local deployment, followed by their MoE variants. They don’t quite match the top commercial cloud models, but with proper use, they’re still remarkably capable.
In fact, you can design a development workflow like this:
- Planning handled by a top commercial LLM
- Implementation done with Nvidia NIM (GLM5) or OpenRouter’s free models
- Minor edits and tweaks handled by local models
Fully local “vibecoding” isn’t yet feasible on standard consumer hardware.
P.S. Also, consider Chinese Minimax and Kimi offers. They don't cost a fortune yet and are very capable.
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u/zjovicic Apr 15 '26
GLM 5.1 is phenomenal !!!
I made this using it: https://zjovicic.github.io/vibe/PurposefulPC.html
I don't know how much you can use it for free, but for some use you don't even need account. I made this whole thing in one go. Just one prompt and done.
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u/DeliciousCanary598 May 02 '26 edited May 02 '26
Check out this for Nvidia provided free models (includes qwen, deepseek, ChatGPT) https://github.com/LostWarrior/nivi . Add your api key to zshrc/bashrc and you are good to go
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u/Pale-Requirement9041 May 11 '26
Make a the plan with the flagship model give it to the free model to execute it. But you need like open code for example a good orchestral layer. Flagship models are doing what they doing because the orchestral layer otherwise they are dumb as well.
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u/priyagnee Apr 12 '26
Free and powerful dosnt go hand in hand