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Best llm for business free

Best Free LLMs for Business in 2026

For business use, "free" LLMs typically mean open-source models (downloadable weights, self-hosted for zero licensing/API fees but with infrastructure costs) or free API tiers (rate-limited hosted access, ideal for prototyping or low-volume). Open-source excels in privacy, customization, and scalability, while free APIs offer quick starts without hardware.

Key criteria for business: High performance on reasoning/coding/multilingual tasks, enterprise features (tool-calling, long context), permissive licenses, and easy deployment. Data from 2026 benchmarks (e.g., AIME, MMLU-Pro, LiveCodeBench) shows open-source closing the gap with proprietary models like GPT-5/Claude 4.

Top Open-Source LLMs (Self-Hosted)

These are fully free for commercial use (Apache/MIT licenses). Run locally/on-premises for data privacy. Top picks from benchmarks (e.g., whatllm.org, BentoML, Contabo):

ModelDeveloperParams (Active/Total)StrengthsPros for BusinessCons for Business
DeepSeek V3.2 (Top pick)DeepSeek37B / 685B (MoE)Reasoning/math/coding (beats GPT-5 on AIME 92%; LiveCodeBench 86%); 128k context; tool-use.Privacy/control; efficient inference (vLLM); cost scales with infra only. Quality: 41.2/50.Needs multi-GPU (e.g., 8x H200); revenue license over $1M.
GLM-4.7 (Thinking)Z AI~30B MoECoding/agents/UI (AIME 95%; MMLU-Pro 86%); multi-turn stability. Quality: 41.7/50.Agentic workflows; single H200 GPU; fine-tuning freedom.English/STEM bias; resource-heavy variants.
Qwen3-235BAlibaba22B / 235B (MoE)Multilingual (119 langs); 1M+ context; math/coding (GPQA top).Global business/RAG; Apache 2.0 (no restrictions).High memory for long context (~1TB GPU).
Llama 4 Scout/MaverickMeta17B / 109-400B (MoE)Multimodal; 10M context (Scout); beats GPT-4o.Efficient (single H100 quantized); 200 langs.License limits >700M users; EU vision blocks.
Kimi K2.5Kimi32B / 1T (MoE)Agents/reasoning (top quality 46.8); 256k context.Fast prototyping; no lock-in.UI display req. for large commercial.

Deployment Tools:

  • Ollama: Easiest for local/business testing (CLI/GUI, runs on laptop).
  • vLLM/Text Gen Inference: Production serving (autoscaling, batching).
  • LM Studio: Polished GUI for non-devs.
  • Host on Hugging Face Spaces (free low-usage) or cloud (AWS/GCP spot instances ~$1.50/hr).

Top Free API Providers

Rate-limited but zero cost for MVP/business pilots. Great for integration without infra.

ProviderKey Free ModelsRate Limits (2026)ProsConsBest For
Groq (Top pick)DeepSeek R1, Llama 3.3 70B, Gemma 21k req/day; 6k tokens/minBlazing speed (150+ t/s); diverse.Daily caps.Real-time chat/coding.
OpenRouterDeepSeek R1, Llama 3.3, Mistral20 req/min; 200/dayModel variety; high limits.Daily cap for volume.Multi-model testing.
Google AI StudioGemini 2.0 Flash1M tokens/min; 1.5k req/dayPowerful; generous tokens.Google account.Analysis/experimentation.
Hugging Face InferenceLlama/Gemma (<10GB)Monthly creditsEasy/open models.Size limits.Custom prototypes.
Fireworks AILlama 405B, DeepSeek R16k RPM; $1 creditsFast/custom; 2.5B tokens/day.Credits expire.Inference-heavy apps.

Sign-up: All need free API keys (e.g., Groq: instant).

Comparison & Recommendations

  • Choose Open-Source if: Privacy/scale needed (e.g., customer data). Start with DeepSeek V3.2 via Ollama – frontier performance at low cost (~$1.10-0.30/M tokens self-hosted).
  • Choose Free APIs if: Quick PoC/low volume. Groq for speed/reliability.
  • Hybrid: Test on Groq/OpenRouter, deploy self-hosted for prod.
  • Cost Reality: Self-hosting needs GPUs (~$1-5/hr cloud), but saves vs. paid APIs ($1.50-5/M tokens).
  • Business Fit: All support tools/RAG/agents; DeepSeek/GLM excel in enterprise reasoning.

What’s your business use case (e.g., customer support, code gen, data analysis)? Do you prefer local hosting, cloud APIs, or have infra budget/hardware? Any needs like multilingual or multimodal?