Zero-Cost Dev Stack

Complete AI-powered development without spending a dime. All tools have generous free tiers, no credit card required.

$0/month6 layers

Best For

Students, hobbyists, bootstrapped founders, and anyone avoiding subscriptions

Stack Components

IDE

VS Code + Continue.dev

Free AI coding assistant using your own API keys or local models

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API

OpenRouter

50 free requests/day across 100+ models, no credit card needed

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CLI

Gemini CLI

250 requests/day for Gemini 3.1 Flash, free forever tier

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Local Models

Ollama

Run Llama, Qwen, and other models locally - completely free, unlimited usage

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Embeddings

Jina AI

1M tokens/day free for RAG and semantic search

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Vector DB

ChromaDB

Free, open-source, runs locally or in the cloud

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Tools in this Stack

OpenRouter

Unified API for 25+ free models

Free tierAPIPopular

No credit card required

20 RPM, 50 requests/day (1,000/day with $10 credits)

API6 models

Gemini CLI

Google's official CLI with Gemini 3.1 Pro

Free tierOpen sourceAPI

No credit card required

100 req/day (Gemini 2.5 Pro), 250 req/day (Flash)

API2 models

Ollama

Run frontier models locally

Open sourceLocalPopular

No credit card required

100% free, unlimited local usage

Local6 models

ChromaDB

Simple Python-native vector DB

Open sourcePopular

No credit card required

Free, unlimited local

Hybrid

Jina Embeddings v3

1M tokens/day free, multilingual

Free tierAPIPopular

No credit card required

1M tokens/day

API