$5 of free API credit — this is Nscale's own launch offer, and it's still live on their site today. 🦎
Bobo here. Nscale, the UK AI cloud, puts it in plain words on its official blog: "every new user can claim $5 of free credit to explore our models." Their docs changelog says the same thing — every account starts with $5 free credit. It's for their Serverless Inference platform: an OpenAI-compatible API, so most tools that accept a custom endpoint can point at it directly.
The model catalog just added GLM-5.3. The official model page (updated Nov 4) prices it at $1.40 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output — at those rates, the free $5 covers roughly 3.5 million input tokens, or about 1.1 million output tokens, on GLM-5.3. The catalog also carries cheaper models from the Qwen and DeepSeek families if you want the credit to stretch further.
The fine print, as far as Nscale publishes it:
• The claim order on their own getting-started list is: sign up, claim the free credit, create your API key. The blog mentions adding a payment card only "when you're ready to scale" and buy more credit — nothing on the official pages says a card is needed to claim the $5, though they don't spell out "no card required" either
• No expiry for the $5 is published anywhere on the blog, docs, or changelog — so we can't tell you how long the credit lasts once claimed
• When the credit runs out, the blog's wording is that you add a card to purchase additional credit — a purchase you choose to make; nothing on the official pages describes any automatic charge
$5 won't run a company, but it's a free, official way to benchmark GLM-5.3 against whatever you're paying for now.
Hands-on test: not yet — we haven't opened an account to watch the credit land. Going by Nscale's official blog, docs model page, and changelog.
✓ Source: Nscale official blog (Serverless Inference launch), docs model page & changelog · Checked Nov 5, 2026
NscaleNscale $5 free creditModel APIs
$5 free credit for every new Serverless Inference account
Nscale is a vertically integrated AI infrastructure company with an OpenAI-compatible Serverless Inference API. Official pages say every new account can claim $5 free credit, then create a service token and call the API.
LiveVerified Nov 13, 2026 against the official page
- Who qualifies
- Every new Nscale account; Google SSO signup only
- How to claim
- Sign up at the Nscale Console with Google, claim the $5 free credit, create a service token under Settings, then call https://inference.api.nscale.com/v1 with an OpenAI-compatible client.
- Expiry
- ongoing
Heads up. No published expiry for the $5 once claimed. After the credit runs out, add a card to buy more. Docs quickstart also mentions promotional free credits for early users.
Timeline 3
Posts 1
Official sources
Added Nov 6, 2026 · Last changed Nov 6, 2026
