Recommended coding-friendly models to try

First, the old friend openrouter. After depositing $10, you get 1000 free calls per day. Most of the time there are a few decent models in the free tier. The official policy reserves the right to set an expiry on the deposited amount, there may be a one-year validity period, but my $10 from over a year ago is still valid. Recently tried on a limited-time basis inclusion…
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First, the old friend openrouter. After depositing $10, you get 1000 free calls per day. Most of the time there are a few decent models in the free tier. The official policy reserves the right to set an expiry on the deposited amount, which may have a one-year validity period, but my $10 from over a year ago is still valid. Recently tried on a limited-time basis inclusionAI:Ling-2.6-1T and tencent:hy3 preview. The Hunyuan 3 preview is the first Tencent model I’ve used—299B parameters, and its coding performance is better than the 1T Ling. Larger model parameter count isn’t always better: smaller models are generally mediocre, while larger ones vary in quality. hy3-preview is worth a try. The second old friend, modelscope, offers 2000 free calls per account per day, supports many models, and has per-model daily call limits that adjust flexibly based on load. From my experience, current advanced models get at least dozens of calls daily, enough to briefly try and compare models to your taste. Most recommended are glm5.1 and deepseekv4flash. Google’s gemini cli (gemini 3.1 flash preview) and antigravity (anthropic series and gemini 3.1 series) can both be used via cliproxyapi reverse proxy. Those with multiple Google accounts can use them freely. My account is over 20 years old and has always worked, but rumors say accounts may be banned—use at your own risk. chatgpt free lets you briefly try the GPT5 series models. Those with multiple accounts can also use cliproxyapi to build their own account pool. Free tier may not access high-load models during busy periods; keep a plus subscription ready for occasional free-tier throttling. From my experience, free accounts may not suit reverse proxying to other tools; plus reverse proxying hasn’t been banned so far, but several free accounts were banned—reverse proxying to codex is safe. Xiaomi mimo’s hundred-trillion-token creator program: after filling out a form and passing review, you get a one-month token plan. Some find it decent, since it’s free. The above are free options. Additionally, deepseek official currently has a big discount and is worth trying for its huge context window and cache hit rate.

Recommended coding-friendly models to try Figure 1