SambaNova Cloud free tier: limits, keys and failover

What is free on SambaNova

SambaNova's rate-limit docs define a free tier that applies when no payment method is linked, covering five models. Linking a payment method moves the account to the pay-as-you-go Developer tier.

Examples listed as free when we checked: DeepSeek-V3.1 , Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct , gpt-oss-120b , DeepSeek-V3.2 , gemma-4-31B-it . Check the current catalog and your account access. Ficelle refreshes catalog data and applies eligibility checks during selection.

Listed free model examples on SambaNova

• Gemma 4 gemma-4-31B-it
• gpt-oss-120b gpt-oss-120b

SambaNova free-tier limits

On the free tier, DeepSeek-V3.1, Meta-Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct and gpt-oss-120b (production) plus DeepSeek-V3.2 and gemma-4-31B-it (preview) each allow 20 requests per minute, 20 requests per day and 200,000 tokens per day. Rate-limit status comes back in x-ratelimit response headers.

Official pages disagree. The rate-limits docs say the free tier applies with no payment method linked, while the Plans page describes the Free plan as adding a payment method and buying credits.

Get a SambaNova API key

Create keys in the API section of the SambaCloud portal, up to 25 per user. A key cannot be viewed again after creation.

https://cloud.sambanova.ai/apis

OpenAI compatibility

Chat Completions and the Responses API are supported, plus an Anthropic Messages endpoint. presence_penalty and frequency_penalty are ignored, and n (1 to 8) cannot be combined with tools.

https://api.sambanova.ai/v1

Data and privacy

Per the SambaCloud terms, you keep all rights to your content and SambaNova processes it only as needed to provide the service or as required by law.

Through Ficelle, your SambaNova key stays on your machine and prompts go straight to SambaNova: there is no Ficelle proxy in between.

Before you rely on it

• Ficelle's example configuration leaves SambaNova disabled. Confirm the no-payment account tier and allowed models before enabling it; provider-pack membership does not verify live access.
• The free tier allows only 20 requests per day per model.
• Preview models may be removed at short notice and are not meant for production.
• Official pages disagree on whether the free tier needs a payment method.

Use SambaNova with automatic failover

Ficelle can include SambaNova behind your local OpenAI-compatible endpoint when the integration is enabled and its models pass free-access and capability checks. SambaNova is listed in Ficelle Pro's maintained provider pack. Check your installed configuration, credentials and account entitlement before relying on it. Another eligible candidate must be available for failover to succeed. Local routing guards do not control upstream billing when an account permits paid usage beyond its free allocation. See strict-zero routing and account limits.

# SambaNova ships in Ficelle Pro's maintained provider pack.
ficelle doctor --text          # check this install before configuring provider access

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(base_url="http://127.0.0.1:8646/v1", api_key="ficelle-local")

# Ficelle selects among configured, enabled, eligible models.
# If none can serve the request, it returns an error.
client.chat.completions.create(
    model="ficelle/auto-tools",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "..."}],
)

See what Ficelle Pro includes →

Pick a model type

Choose a model type for your request. Eligibility depends on the installed provider configuration, catalog data, free-access evidence and capability checks. A catalog listing alone does not confirm that your account can call a model.

• Tool calling
• JSON & structured output
• Fast, low-latency
• Reasoning
• Coding assistants
• Agent orchestration
• Long context
• Context compression
• Vision
• Audio input
• Video input
• Multimodal

Questions