Pollinations.ai API: Free Text & Image Generation API (2026)

Short answer: Pollinations is no longer an anonymous, unlimited free API. Every generation request needs a key and is charged in Pollen (one Pollen corresponds to one US dollar). The free part is Quest Pollen: small one-off rewards for tasks like creating your first key or trying each model type, worth about 3 Pollen for the basic setup quests. That goes a long way on cheap models, but it only works on models that aren't marked paid-only.

What Pollinations offers

Pollinations runs a single API at gen.pollinations.ai that puts text, image, video, audio (speech, transcription, voice changing), realtime voice, embeddings and even 3D generation behind one key and one balance. It speaks the OpenAI Chat Completions, Responses, Images, Embeddings, Audio and Realtime APIs, and its text models also accept Anthropic Messages requests. The catalog mixes major commercial models (OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Mistral and others), open models, and community models that other developers publish and earn from.

At the time of checking, the public text catalog listed 225 models and the image/video catalog 84, of which 127 text models and 67 image models were marked paid-only. Those counts change frequently; the live lists at gen.pollinations.ai/text/models and gen.pollinations.ai/image/models are public and need no key.

How Pollen works

Your account's GET /account/balance response reports both buckets (tier for Quest Pollen, paid for Paid Pollen) and their total. Regular models draw on the total; paid-only models only draw on Paid Pollen. Every model in the catalog lists its price in Pollen per token, per image or per second, depending on the modality.

Pollinations' x402 prepaid keys accept any amount from $0.01 to $10,000 and credit the key with the same amount of Pollen — which is how we know one Pollen corresponds to one dollar.

Free Quest Pollen: what you can earn

Quests are listed in your dashboard and in the public catalog at gen.pollinations.ai/quests/catalog. Rewards are paid into the Quest Pollen bucket, and claiming is done in the dashboard. These are the main ones listed when we checked:

Adding up the setup quests: 0.25 (key) + 1.00 (four model types) + 0.25 (app) + 0.25 (agent) + 0.25 (community model) + 1 (CLI) = 3.0 Quest Pollen. Discord and a long-standing GitHub account can add 2 more. Some quests are tied to topping up, so they're not free. Quests can be added, changed or retired at any time.

What the free Pollen buys

Prices below come from Pollinations' live model catalog; the per-request figures are our arithmetic. Both models are usable with Quest Pollen.

Worked example for GPT-5.4 Nano: 500 × 0.15 ÷ 1,000,000 = 0.000075 Pollen for input, plus 300 × 0.9375 ÷ 1,000,000 ≈ 0.000281 for output, for about 0.000356 Pollen per request. 0.25 ÷ 0.000356 ≈ 700. Frontier models and video cost far more, and many of them are paid-only anyway.

Step-by-step: getting started

1. Sign in at enter.pollinations.ai.
2. Open the Keys page and create a secret key (sk_). Give it only the model permissions and budget you need; keys support per-key budgets, permissions and expiry.
3. Claim your quest rewards in the dashboard as you complete them.
4. Check which models you can use: in the catalog, models with paid_only set to true need Paid Pollen.
5. Send a request with Authorization: Bearer <your key>, or use the OpenAI SDK as below.
6. Watch your balance with GET /account/balance and history with GET /account/usage (the key needs the account:usage permission).

from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://gen.pollinations.ai/v1",
    api_key="sk_your_secret_key",
)
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="openai/gpt-5.4-nano",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Summarise the theory of relativity in one sentence."}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)

Simple GET endpoints such as /image/{prompt} and /text/{prompt} also accept the key as a ?key= query parameter for places that can't set headers, but never put a secret key in a public web page.

Key types and the legacy free path

Pollinations used to be known for completely open, no-key URLs on image.pollinations.ai and text.pollinations.ai. That model has been replaced by keyed access on gen.pollinations.ai. If you find old tutorials using those URLs, expect them to need a key now.

Building apps where users pay

For public apps, the free route that scales is Connect User Wallets (also called Bring Your Own Pollen). You register a publishable App Key with your redirect URIs; users sign in with Pollinations through OAuth 2.1 (PKCE for web apps or a device flow for CLIs) and approve a budget and expiry; you receive a scoped sk_ key that spends their Pollen, not yours. Users can revoke it at any time from their dashboard. Several quests reward this: your first connected user, ten external users, and Paid Pollen flowing through your app.

Developers who publish community models or agents receive 75% of the Pollen spent on them, kept in the same bucket (Quest or Paid) that the caller paid with. Pollinations says cash payouts are not currently available, so earnings can only be spent on the platform.

Limits and errors to expect

• 402 PAYMENT_REQUIRED — the key authenticated but the account balance or the key's budget is exhausted.
• 403 FORBIDDEN — insufficient permissions, or a paid-only model without Paid Pollen.
• 429 RATE_LIMITED — too many requests. Per-model user limits appear as per_user_rpm in the /models response; a null value means Pollinations adds no cap of its own.
• Media caps — video durations, allowed resolutions and reference-image counts are published per model in the catalog, and requests outside those ranges are rejected.
• Uploads — uploaded media get unique, publicly readable URLs with a 30-day lifecycle unless refreshed.

A secret key with no budget can spend your whole balance, including Paid Pollen. Set a per-key budget, especially for keys used in scripts or agents.

How it compares with other free AI APIs

Pollinations' strength is breadth: one key for text, images, video, audio and embeddings, plus a user-pays model for public apps. Its free allowance is small and one-off rather than recurring. If you need a renewable free quota, these may suit better:

See also our guide to free AI API keys for a wider comparison.

Common mistakes

• Using old no-key URLs. Anonymous access has been superseded; requests now need a key.
• Choosing a paid-only model with only Quest Pollen. Check paid_only in the catalog first.
• Embedding a secret key in front-end code. Use an App Key with Connect User Wallets instead.
• Forgetting to claim quests. Rewards are claimed in the dashboard; the API only reports their status.
• Assuming a daily refill. We found no documented recurring free grant; plan around one-off quest rewards or top-ups.