hao-tokens: A Practical Guide to Free and Cheap LLM API Tokens

Every indie developer who has ever burned through a free API tier knows the feeling: you build something cool, and then your OPENAI_API_KEY runs out at the worst possible moment. hao-tokens is a curated list of the legitimate ways to get free or low-cost LLM tokens so you can keep building.

Author: Koutian Wu; GitHub: ktwu01

What “薅 tokens” Means

The Chinese internet slang 薅 (hāo) means “to pluck” or “to harvest”, as in plucking wool from a sheep. 薅 tokens is the affectionate term for legitimately collecting free API credits across providers, student programs, hackathon vouchers, and provider promos. Nothing here is a hack or an exploit. It is just a list of programs that already exist and are happy to give developers free tokens.

Why This Repo Exists

When I started shipping AI side projects, I noticed three things:

1. Free credits are scattered across dozens of provider blogs and never indexed in one place.
2. Student and academic programs often hand out generous credits but nobody tells you about them.
3. Region-specific providers (especially in China) have very different pricing curves.

So I started keeping notes. The repo grew from there.

What You Will Find

• Provider free tiers for OpenAI, Anthropic Claude, Google Gemini, and others.
• Student and academic programs that grant API credits with a .edu email.
• Hackathon vouchers that often go unclaimed after events.
• Cloud provider credits that bundle LLM API access (Azure, AWS, GCP).
• Regional providers (Chinese, EU, etc.) with different pricing structures.

Who This Is For

• Indie hackers shipping AI products on a tight budget.
• Students learning to build with LLM APIs.
• Researchers running experiments without an institutional billing account.
• Anyone tired of seeing “monthly quota exceeded”.

Contributing

If you know of a program that should be on the list, open a PR or an issue at github.com/ktwu01/hao-tokens. The more eyes on this list, the more useful it becomes for the next developer who is one free credit away from launching their idea.

Tokens are the new GPU hours. Knowing where to get them legitimately is its own skill.