What you’ll be able to do
Right, so someone sent you a link to “free ChatGPT Plus” and you’re here because a small part of you knows that’s rubbish but you wanted a second opinion anyway. Good instinct. There is a lot of genuinely free AI out there, you just have to know where the edges are, because every free plan has one.
By the end of this you’ll know what ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity actually give you for nothing. You’ll know which student offers are real (for UK students, one is confirmed on the vendor’s own page) and which trials quietly turn into a bill. You’ll know how to get an API key if you fancy building something small, and how to switch auto-reload off so a bug in your code can’t keep topping up your balance. And if none of that appeals, there’s the route where everything runs on your own laptop and never asks you for anything at all.
I’m not quoting prices anywhere in this guide. They change too often. Where money comes into it, I’ll point you at the vendor’s own pricing page so you can check on the day.
Before you start
Free plans aren’t charity. They’re a taste of the paid version, and on most consumer plans your chats may be used to improve the company’s models unless you opt out. That’s not sinister, it’s just the deal, and you should know you’re making it.
A few things worth knowing before you touch anything. Free trials renew automatically, that’s the whole business model, so the “free month” only stays free if you remember to act. The UK student offer below needs re-verifying every year and still asks for a payment method at sign-up, even though the point is you’re not meant to pay yet.
So: never paste a password, a card number, or anything you wouldn’t want a stranger reading, into any of these tools. Doesn’t matter how “private” it feels. It’s a text box on someone else’s server, treat it that way.
Get set up
Right, the assistants themselves first.
ChatGPT (chatgpt.com) gives you unlimited text chats on the everyday model on the Free plan, subject to abuse guardrails. Uploads, image generation, voice chats, deep research and memory are all there but limited, and image generation is slower. Projects and scheduled tasks start at Plus. Check openai.com/chatgpt/pricing for the current plans.
Claude (claude.ai) is generous for a free tier, honestly. Web, desktop and mobile apps, web search, creating files and running code, memory, connecting your apps, voice mode, up to five Projects, and both the Sonnet and Haiku models. Claude Code and the Research feature are paid. Check claude.com/pricing.
Gemini (gemini.google.com) gives you the Flash model with varying access to Pro, image generation and editing, Deep Research, Gemini Live, Canvas, Gems, Gemini Notebook, and 15 GB of storage across Gmail, Drive and Photos. Video generation is on the paid plans. Check gemini.google/subscriptions.
Copilot (copilot.microsoft.com) is free. Sign in with a Microsoft, Apple or Google account and you can upload files, use voice and have it remember you across conversations.
Perplexity is a free app with in-app purchases, going by its UK App Store listing. Its Pro subscription renews automatically, like everything else on this list, so keep an eye on it.
Free pictures, while we’re here: the free ChatGPT and Gemini plans both include some image generation. Free video is where it gets thin; on Gemini it’s a paid-plan feature (or part of the student offer below).
Students. If you’re at university and 18 or over, Google gives eligible students a Google AI Plus plan free for one year. That’s double the free usage limits, 400 GB of storage, video generation with Gemini Omni, and unlimited uploads for study notebooks (gemini.google/gb/students). You have to verify you’re eligible each year, and you have to redeem it by 31 December 2026. Here’s the catch: it wants a payment method at sign-up, and once the free year ends it charges automatically unless you cancel. Put a reminder in your calendar now, not later.
If you’re a student in the US, OpenAI offers four free months of ChatGPT Plus to students at eligible US degree-granting institutions, verified through SheerID and claimable until 31 October (chatgpt.com/students/2026). It needs a payment method and renews unless you cancel. It’s US only, so don’t waste an evening trying from the UK.
Claude and Perplexity don’t list a current student offer on the pages checked for this guide, so none is listed here.
Trials. Microsoft 365 Personal, Family and Premium (the plans that put Copilot inside Word, Excel and Outlook) each have a one-month free trial, and it renews automatically at the regular price unless you cancel it in your Microsoft account. Google AI Pro trials work the same way: they charge when the trial ends unless you cancel first. The rule for every trial is the same. Before you press start, know exactly where you’ll cancel it and put the date in your calendar.
Building something? You’ll want an API key, which is what lets your own code talk to a model.
Google AI Studio (aistudio.google.com) has a free tier for the Gemini API: limited models, free input and output tokens. You need to be 18 or over, and it’s meant for developers. Two UK-specific things in Google’s terms: if you make an app available to users in the UK, EEA or Switzerland, it has to run on Paid Services; and for UK users, Google applies its paid-tier data terms even to the free quota. Elsewhere, free-tier content is used to improve Google’s products.
OpenAI’s API (platform.openai.com) works on prepaid credits, and here’s the bit that catches people out: auto-reload is switched ON by default when you set up billing. Turn it off unless you actually want your card charged automatically. Purchased credits expire after a year, and OpenAI says not to rely on the prepaid balance as an instant spending cut-off, because usage can run slightly past zero before access stops.
Claude’s API (platform.claude.com) is the same shape: prepaid usage credits, auto-reload optional, credits expire a year after purchase and aren’t refundable. Anthropic’s pricing docs say new users get a small amount of free credit to test with. And your Claude Pro or Max subscription does not include API access; they’re separate products.
If you want to try other models: xAI’s console (console.x.ai) needs you to load credits before you make your first call. Moonshot’s Kimi API (platform.kimi.ai, the old platform.moonshot.ai address sends you there) is paid per token and wants a small top-up before you can start. Z.ai (z.ai/model-api) has you top up on its Billing page before creating a key, though its pricing page does list a few models as free, GLM-4.7-Flash being one.
Whatever key you get, treat it like a password. Never put it in a website’s or app’s front-end code, never commit it to Git, keep it in an environment variable instead. A leaked key lets someone else spend your credit.
Free for ever. If you’ve got a reasonably modern computer, you can run open models on it. Ollama (ollama.com) says plainly that local models are always free and that nothing you run locally leaves your machine; just be aware it also sells cloud models, which use paid credits, so stick to the local ones. LM Studio (lmstudio.ai, now LM Studio Bionic) has a free plan that runs local models too. They’re less capable than the big cloud assistants, but nobody’s counting your messages.
Try it yourself
Here’s a prompt to work out which free assistant actually suits what you’re doing this month:
I don't want to pay for AI. Here is what I want to do this month: [list]. For each, tell me which free assistant (ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot or Perplexity) suits it best and what free-plan limit I am most likely to hit. Five lines, no upgrades.If you’ve got a few trials on the go and you’re worried you’ll forget one, this builds you a cheat sheet:
I've signed up for these free trials: [name, start date, where I paid: App Store, Google Play or the website]. Make me a table with the date each one charges and the exact place I cancel it.And if you’re building something and want a second pair of eyes on your API key before you share code with anyone:
I'm building a small tool that calls an AI API. Check this code for anywhere my API key could leak (hard-coded, sent to the browser, logged, committed) and tell me how to move it into an environment variable: [paste code with the key replaced by XXXX]Notice the last one: you replace the key with XXXX before you paste. The assistant doesn’t need the real key to find where it would leak.
Check the result
Right, so how do you know it’s all working the way it should?
Open the account settings on whatever assistant you’re using and check which plan it says you’re on. Sounds obvious, but it’s the thing people skip.
For every trial you started, put the charge date in your calendar, two days before, not on the day. Two days gives you room to cancel calmly rather than at midnight.
If you set up an API account, go back into billing and confirm auto-reload says off. Don’t assume it took, actually look.
And before you share any code, search it yourself for the key. Search the files for the first few characters of the key string. If it’s not there, you’re fine.
If it doesn’t work
Hit a daily limit? Switch to another free assistant for the rest of the day. There’s no penalty for jumping around, and it’s a good way to find out which one you actually like.
Student verification failing? Go through the vendor’s own verification help. Don’t go looking for a workaround; the “workarounds” are where the scams live.
Got charged after a trial ended? Cancel it wherever you actually subscribed. On an iPhone that’s Settings, your name, Subscriptions, then Cancel Subscription. On Google Play, and this catches people out constantly, uninstalling the app does NOT cancel the subscription; you have to cancel it in Play’s subscriptions. Then contact the vendor’s support if you were charged when you shouldn’t have been.
A billing error on an API account usually just means you’re out of credit. That’s the system doing its job, it’s what stops a surprise bill. Top up if you want to keep going.
On privacy: free plans may use your chats to train models unless you find the opt-out in the settings. Never paste passwords or card numbers into any of them, doesn’t matter which one.
One more thing. You’ll see sites selling “free ChatGPT Plus”, cheap shared logins, “lifetime” accounts, cracked apps. Don’t. Anthropic’s terms say outright that you may not share your login or API key with anyone, and OpenAI says sharing API keys is against its terms. A shared account means whoever else has that login can see your chat history, and when it stops working you’ve got nobody to complain to. It’s not a discount, it’s someone else reading your homework. Say no.
Questions people ask
Is ChatGPT actually free, and what do you have to pay for?
The ChatGPT Free plan gives you unlimited text chats on the everyday model, subject to abuse guardrails. Uploads, image generation, voice chats, deep research and memory are limited, and Projects and scheduled tasks start at Plus.
Which free AI assistant should I use?
ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, Copilot and Perplexity all have free offerings. Claude is generous for a free tier. Copilot is free, and signing in with a Microsoft, Apple or Google account adds uploads, voice and memory. If you hit a daily limit you can simply switch to another free assistant for the rest of the day.
Is the free Google AI plan for students really free for a year?
Google gives eligible students aged 18 or over a Google AI Plus plan free for one year, but it wants a payment method at sign-up and charges automatically once the year ends unless you cancel. You must verify eligibility each year and redeem by 31 December 2026.
How do I stop an AI API from charging my card automatically?
On OpenAI's API, auto-reload is switched ON by default when you set up billing, so turn it off unless you want your card charged automatically. Afterwards go back into billing and actually confirm it says off rather than assuming it took.
Is it safe to paste my work into free AI tools?
On most consumer free plans your chats may be used to improve the company's models unless you find the opt-out in settings. Never paste a password, a card number, or anything you wouldn't want a stranger reading into any of them.
Keep exploring
If you want help actually picking between these assistants for your situation, there’s “How to get AI to help me choose an assistant”. If the free-for-ever local route appeals more than any of this, “How to get AI to run on my own computer” walks through Ollama and LM Studio properly. And if you want to go further than an API key and build your own assistant, see “How to get AI to build me my own assistant”. The free-tools list on this site is worth a browse too.
Sources and review notes
https://openai.com/chatgpt/pricing/ https://claude.com/pricing https://gemini.google/gb/subscriptions/ https://copilot.microsoft.com/ https://apps.apple.com/gb/app/perplexity-ai-search-chat/id1668000334 https://gemini.google/gb/students/ https://chatgpt.com/students/2026/ https://www.microsoft.com/en-gb/microsoft-365/buy/compare-all-microsoft-365-products https://support.apple.com/en-gb/118428 https://support.google.com/googleplay/answer/7018481 https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/pricing https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/terms https://ai.google.dev/gemini-api/docs/api-key https://help.openai.com/en/articles/8264644-setting-up-and-managing-prepaid-api-billing https://help.openai.com/en/articles/5112595-best-practices-for-api-key-safety https://support.claude.com/en/articles/8977456-how-do-i-pay-for-my-claude-api-usage https://support.claude.com/en/articles/9876003-i-have-a-paid-claude-subscription-pro-max-team-or-enterprise-plans-why-do-i-have-to-pay-separately-to-use-the-claude-api-and-console https://platform.claude.com/docs/en/about-claude/pricing https://www.anthropic.com/legal/consumer-terms https://docs.x.ai/developers/quickstart https://platform.kimi.ai/docs/pricing/limits https://docs.z.ai/guides/overview/quick-start https://docs.z.ai/guides/overview/pricing https://ollama.com/pricing https://lmstudio.ai/pricing
Review date: 26 September 2026. Every plan, offer and date above was read on the vendor’s own page that day; the Perplexity free app was confirmed from its UK App Store listing because perplexity.ai blocks automated checks. Student offers and trials change often: check the linked page before you sign up.