You deploy an AI feature on a free server. Day one: perfect. Day seven: your quota is gone. Your app starts returning errors. You check the dashboard. You used 10 million tokens in a week. "Free" turned out to be a limited trial.
This is the reality of free AI tiers. They are not free. They are prepaid with your time, your data, and your future migration effort.
Disclosure: This article was prepared as part of MonkeyCode's product outreach.
MonkeyCode is an open-source project that offers free model access and a free server option. This article does not review MonkeyCode. It gives you a framework to evaluate any free AI offering, including MonkeyCode.
The real price of "free"
