A free LuciQA license does not include AI requests. It lets you connect one provider for each question, with no LuciQA question-count limit. The provider’s account, quota, and billing rules still apply. That distinction matters more than a large number in a comparison chart.
Where to start
Gemini offers a free API tier, but its actual limits vary by model and project. The current limit is visible in Google AI Studio. Groq publishes free-plan limits by model and points users to their own account for exact values. OpenRouter has free model endpoints, including the Gemma models selected in LuciQA, but free-model requests share account limits and capacity can narrow. Cloudflare Workers AI has a daily free Neuron allocation; the units are not the same as requests.
Mistral has account-dependent Free mode access. Cerebras should be treated as trial access, not an indefinite free tier. OpenAI and Claude should be treated as paid APIs in a LuciQA setup. Consumer chat subscriptions do not automatically pay for their APIs.
Match the API to the question
For clear text, LuciQA’s OCR reads the selected area locally and sends recognized text to your chosen provider. That may avoid image-input charges, but OCR can misread formulas or unusual layouts. For diagrams, choose Image mode and check that your selected model accepts images. A provider’s free text access does not guarantee free vision access.
In Pro, every provider set to Every question receives a separate request, and each request uses that provider’s own quota. A When needed provider is called only after an error, an empty answer, low self-estimated confidence, or disagreement. Those checks do not guarantee correctness.
Before adding a key
Read the provider’s official pricing and rate-limit page, check its dashboard for your account, and set a spending cap where available. Do not put API keys in notes, screenshots, or a repository. LuciQA stores keys in local app settings and requires OS secure storage to use them. The selected OCR text or image still goes to the provider you configured.
See the provider comparison and setup guides for current links. The provider pages were last checked on 24 September 2026; recheck before depending on any free allowance.