One MIT-licensed API for image, text, audio and video, paid for with one balance. Pollinations.ai is an MIT-licensed platform with one API for image, text, audio, video and embedding models, plus hosted agents, MCP tools, a CLI and a catalog of community apps. The homepage lists 46 image, 116 text, 41 audio, 26 video and 3D, and 5 embedding models, plus 105 community models. Billing runs on pollen, where 1 pollen equals $1, topped up as you go. Free pollen comes from Quests, such as solving GitHub Quests, trying models, or building an app or agent, and the first API key earns a small Quest reward. Developers can also let their users sign in and pay for their own usage. I found no G2, Capterra or Trustpilot listings, and the homepage does not publish a fixed free allowance, so check your balance after signing up.
Free tier quotas
Free credits
Free Quest pollen for solving GitHub Quests, trying models, or building an app or agent
First API key
Earns a small Quest reward
Pay as you go
1 pollen equals $1; top up any time and pay for what you use
Users pay
Your users sign in with Pollinations, set a spending limit and pay for their own usage
Model catalog
46 image, 116 text, 41 audio, 26 video and 3D, 5 embedding and 105 community models, per the homepage
Agents
48 hosted agents listed; prompt, code and your-own-server options
Hosted MCP tools
Pollinations, FFmpeg, Exa Search, connectors, computer and machines, among others
Safety checks
Privacy, secrets, NSFW and prompt-attack checks, turned on per request
License
MIT, with the source on GitHub
Last sniffed Oct 20, 2026. Always confirm on the official pricing page.
👍 Good boy
+The platform is open source under the MIT license, and the GitHub repository shows about 5.2k stars, so you can read how the gateway works.
+One API covers many modalities. The homepage counts 46 image, 116 text, 41 audio, 26 video and 3D, and 5 embedding models in the catalog.
+An r/dyadbuilders poster benchmarked a no-key text option from Pollinations at about 186 tokens a second on the openai-fast model. The excerpt does not show a date, so treat it as a point-in-time test.
+The free path is concrete. Quests award pollen for solving GitHub Quests, trying models, or building an app or agent, and the homepage says 49,038 people have completed Quests.
+Developers can pass cost to their users. The Bring Your Own Pollen model has users sign in, set a spending limit and pay for their own usage.
+Safety checks can strip personal data and keys or block unsafe prompts before they reach a model, and you enable them per request.
+A command line tool is available with npx @pollinations/cli, with tasks for connecting OpenCode and generating an image from the terminal.
👎 Watch out
−The free allowance is hard to pin down. The homepage describes pay-as-you-go pollen and Quest credits, not a fixed weekly amount. A third-party page labeled AI-generated and dated February 2026 listed 1.5 pollen a week and no-key access, and I could not confirm either on the site.
−I found no G2, Capterra or Trustpilot listings, and only thin forum evidence. An r/StableDiffusion poster titled a thread Looking for a free Pollinations AI alternative with unlimited image generation, which suggests access has changed for some users, though the excerpt does not say how.
−Community models are published by other developers who connect an endpoint and set their own price, so quality, availability and cost vary by model.
−Some features are marked as coming. The homepage says sandboxes for long-running agents are coming soon.
−The catalog is large and community-driven, with 105 community models next to the first-party ones, so you need to check each model's status and price yourself before you build on it.
−Free credits depend on completing Quests, which means time spent on GitHub tasks instead of a plain monthly allowance.
The catch
The Pollinations homepage describes three ways to get pollen. Pay as you go, where 1 pollen equals $1 and you top up any time. Free credits, where you get free Quest pollen for solving GitHub Quests, trying models, or building an app or agent. And earnings, where you receive a share of what others spend on your models and apps. It also says your first API key earns a small Quest reward.
The homepage does not state a fixed free amount. A third-party page labeled AI-generated and dated February 2026 listed a Spore tier with 1.5 pollen a week, no-key image access and higher paid tiers, but I could not confirm any of that on the site, so I have not used those numbers as facts. Open your account page after signing up to see what you have.
The platform is MIT licensed. Free credits are a way to try models, not a promise of free production capacity. Because community models set their own prices, check each model's price in the models list before building on it.
I did not find statements about a credit card at sign-up or about commercial use of generated output, so both are unknown. No review-site listings exist that I could find, so treat the free terms and reliability as things to test early.
What’s included
✓Single API for image, text, audio, video and embeddings
✓Hosted prompt and code agents
✓Hosted MCP tools including Exa Search and FFmpeg
✓Pollinations CLI
✓Bring Your Own Pollen user billing
✓Media storage for images, audio and video
✓Per-request safety checks for privacy, secrets, NSFW and prompt attacks
✓Community model and agent publishing with earnings
✓Apps catalog
Free tier value
Generosity
B
Estimated value
Free Quest pollen with no fixed published amount; paid usage at 1 pollen per $1
Feature parity
One pollen balance covers every model type. Prices differ by model.
Screenshots
Homepage
Paid plans
Pay as you go
1 pollen equals $1. Top up any time and pay only for what you use. Per-model prices are in the models list.
Earnings for builders
Publish a model, app or agent and receive a share of what others spend on it. This offsets your own costs rather than adding to them.
Users pay
Users sign in with Pollinations and set a spending limit, so the developer carries no usage cost for those users.
Common questions
Is Pollinations free?
You can earn free Quest pollen, and the first API key earns a small reward. The homepage does not publish a fixed free allowance.
How is it priced?
Pay as you go in pollen, where 1 pollen equals $1. Prices vary by model.
Is it open source?
Yes. The GitHub repository states the platform is MIT licensed.
Can my users pay for their own usage?
Yes. The Bring Your Own Pollen option has users sign in, set a spending limit and pay for their own usage.
Are there independent reviews?
I found none on G2, Capterra or Trustpilot. Forum evidence is thin, so test reliability yourself.
Does it work with OpenAI client code?
I could not read the API docs page, which renders with JavaScript, so I cannot confirm that. Check gen.pollinations.ai/docs for the base URL and model names.
Change history
Checked October 22, 2026
Homepage lists pay-as-you-go pollen at $1 each and Quest credits. GitHub README states the MIT license.
