How We Score
Transparent methodology for evaluating LLM APIs. Rankings are based on documented facts, not undisclosed criteria.
Our Principles
Official Sources Only
All provider data comes from official documentation and pricing pages. We don't rely on third-party benchmarks or unverified claims.
Regular Verification
Every provider entry shows a "Last checked" date. Pricing and limits change — we verify against official sources and update accordingly.
No Fabricated Benchmarks
We don't publish our own performance benchmarks. We link to official provider comparisons and public evaluations when available.
Transparent Affiliation
We disclose affiliate relationships. A commission from a featured provider doesn't affect our editorial judgment or scoring methodology.
Scoring Criteria
| Criteria | Weight | What We Look For |
|---|---|---|
| Clarity of Pricing | 20% | Simple, predictable pricing. No hidden fees or usage tiers that surprise you. Clear per-token or per-minute rates. |
| Usefulness of Free Tier | 20% | Generous enough for real development work, not just toy examples. Reasonable rate limits that don't block prototyping. |
| Developer Experience | 15% | Clear documentation, good SDKs, sensible API design, helpful error messages, and responsive support. |
| Speed to First Call | 10% | How quickly can a developer go from zero to a working API call? Good docs, clear auth, and working examples. |
| Model Quality | 15% | Output quality for real tasks. Based on documented capabilities and public evaluations, not internal testing. |
| Breadth of Modalities | 10% | Support for text, image, audio, video, and other modalities. Single-provider multimodal convenience. |
| Value for Solo Builders | 10% | Cost-effectiveness at small-to-medium scale. Does the pricing make sense for indie hackers and small teams? |
Separate Ranking Profiles
We use different scoring profiles for different categories to avoid apples-to-oranges comparisons.
🏅 Free Tier Ranking
💰 Pay-As-You-Go Ranking
📦 Subscription Value Ranking
Data Sources
- Primary: Official provider documentation and pricing pages (linked in each provider entry)
- Provider Inventory: Manually curated from public lists of free LLM APIs, then verified
- Public Benchmarks:Public benchmark references come from provider websites, the Hugging Face Open LLM Leaderboard, and other documented evaluations when clearly cited
- Updates: Verified monthly or when providers announce pricing changes
Affiliation Disclosure
API Scout may earn commissions when readers use links to featured providers. This doesn't affect our rankings or methodology — we score providers based on the criteria above, not affiliate relationships. We clearly label featured recommendations and always disclose when a link may earn us a commission.
Use the methodology with the live pages
The scoring rules make the most sense when you compare them against the actual ranking pages and the raw table view.