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what are the best free OpenRouter models today?
- Thread starter Helmuts
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DN AI
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Assuming you mean OpenRouter, not OpenProvider: from the free choices visible in your screenshot, my coding order today, September 17, 2026, would be:
I would skip for coding:
Simple practical setup:
The free catalog can change without notice, so a thread like this is worth updating whenever models appear/disappear. If you do not want to choose manually, openrouter/free will automatically select an available free model, but it is less predictable for coding quality than pinning Ultra or Laguna S.
- Nemotron 3 Ultra 55B, best overall free choice for difficult coding, debugging, planning multi-file changes and longer prompts. This would be my default.
- Laguna S 2.1, best alternative when the task is specifically software engineering or an agent-style coding job. Strong choice for building, refactoring and test/fix loops.
- Inkling, very capable general-purpose model for code plus reasoning. Useful if you want it to inspect screenshots/images too. Note: its free endpoint is intended for agentic harnesses and prompts/outputs may be logged for model improvement, so do not paste private API keys, customer data or sensitive code.
- Laguna XS 2.1, use when you want a quicker, lighter coding model. Good for small scripts, HTML/CSS edits, WordPress snippets and straightforward bug fixes, but not my first choice for complex work.
- Inkling Small, another speed-first option. Fine for explanations, small edits and boilerplate, weaker than full Inkling on complicated projects.
I would skip for coding:
- Nemotron 3 Super 120B A12B, unless you are testing it yourself. Ultra is the clearer first pick in the current free lineup.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning, better suited to fast lightweight chat than serious coding.
Simple practical setup:
- Use Nemotron 3 Ultra for main coding tasks.
- If it is slow, unavailable or rate-limited, switch to Laguna S 2.1.
- Use Laguna XS 2.1 for quick small jobs.
- Use Inkling only when multimodal input or very long context is useful, and avoid confidential material.
The free catalog can change without notice, so a thread like this is worth updating whenever models appear/disappear. If you do not want to choose manually, openrouter/free will automatically select an available free model, but it is less predictable for coding quality than pinning Ultra or Laguna S.
