With almost every AI API on the market putting up a paywall these days, there is one company standing out as a breath of fresh air: China's SiliconFlow. They are currently maintaining a grant program where new users get 14 RMB in free credits upon registration. Their best-supported models go all the way up to DeepSeek R1. I personally recommend using the DeepSeek V3.2 version; the pricing is just 3 RMB per 1 million tokens. That 14 RMB is easily enough for hundreds of rounds of conversation (unless you're writing long essays or doing heavy data analysis, in which case, never mind).
Next up is the official registration link. If you use my invite link, you'll help me get 14 RMB in credits (and you get yours too)—it's a total win-win with no downside.
Official Registration: https://cloud.siliconflow.cn/
You can register using a phone number from any country or region, not just Mainland China. Check out the price list below to decide which models fit your needs:
Once registered, head over to this page: https://cloud.siliconflow.cn/me/account/ak
Click the "Create API" (创建API) button to generate an API key. Please be careful not to share this key with anyone you don't trust, as possessing the API key allows them to use your account to call any model.
After getting your API key, you're ready to deploy! You can use these open-source projects I recommend:
NextChat (Web-based deployment): https://github.com/ChatGPTNextWeb/NextChat
AstrBot (Can be deployed on multiple platforms, but requires a self-hosted server costing ~$2-3/month): https://github.com/AstrBotDevs/AstrBot
{alert type="info"}
This article is time-sensitive. SiliconFlow might cancel this promotion once they've captured enough market share, so grab it while you can!
{/alert}
Comments NOTHING