The Free Promo Tier: Signup Credits Explained

You shouldn't have to enter a card to find out whether a gateway works for you. NemoRouter's promotional free tier exists for exactly that: sign up, get credits, and make real calls to real models before you spend anything. This guide explains what the free tier is, what it unlocks (everything), and what happens when you outgrow it.

What the free tier is

The promotional tier is a flag-driven entry tier layered on the paid plans. New signups receive a credit grant — real, spendable dollar credits — so your first calls cost you nothing out of pocket. It's promotional by nature: a signup grant, not a recurring free allowance, and never something you purchase.

sign up  →  receive signup credits  →  make real LLM calls (real models, real costs)
         →  credits draw down as you use them
         →  first top-up  →  promoted to a paid tier

The calls are real — real providers, real cost tracking, real guardrails. There's no demo mode; the free tier is the actual product, funded by the grant.

Every feature, on the free tier too

The most important thing to know: the free tier is not feature-limited. Guardrails, budgets, observability, RBAC, fallback, A/B testing — all of it works exactly as it does on a paid tier. The tiers differ only on platform fee and rate limits, never on capabilities (that's platform-fee, not feature-gating). So what you evaluate on the free tier is what you get when you pay.

What happens at your first top-up

When you buy your first credits, you're promoted from the promotional tier to a paid tier. Nothing is lost in the transition:

• Your remaining signup credits stay spendable.
• Your keys, settings, guardrails, and budgets carry over untouched.
• You start getting the paid tier's platform-fee rate and rate limits.

The promotion is a billing-status change, not a migration. You don't rebuild anything; you just cross from "funded by the signup grant" to "funded by credits you bought" — with 100% of that purchase becoming spendable credits.

When the free tier is right (and when to top up)

The free tier is right for evaluation, prototyping, and low-volume side projects — anywhere the signup grant covers your spend. Top up when:

• the grant runs low and you want to keep going,
• you need higher rate limits than the entry tier,
• you're going to production and want a paid tier's fee structure.

There's no pressure to top up before then — the free tier is a genuine starting point, not a countdown.

The takeaway

The promotional free tier lets you build against the real gateway — real models, real costs, every feature unlocked — funded by a signup credit grant, with no card required to start. When you outgrow it, the first top-up promotes you to a paid tier with everything carried over and 100% of your purchase as credits. Evaluate the real product, then pay when it's earned its place. Sign up and start building.