# Stop Paying $20/month. Use NVIDIA Build: 80+ Free AI Models

> Source: <https://dev.to/lorenzojkrl/stop-paying-20month-use-nvidia-build-80-free-ai-models-17ih>
> Published: 2026-06-17 10:08:29+00:00

This is a TLDR of a [longer article](https://medium.com/gopenai/stop-paying-20-month-use-nvidia-build-80-free-ai-models-0b08205f91b5?sk=e3dec0158ca29b1c2f1231e5dc6b0eab) where I tried multiple free AI models on Cursor and VS Code, through Cline.

The service is called NVIDIA NIM e.g. NVIDIA Inference Microservices.

It lives at build.nvidia.com.

The catalog contains over 100 AI models, many of them free and hosted on NVIDIA's own DGX Cloud infrastructure. The list includes names you already know:

Just go to build.nvidia.com and create a free account. You'll need to verify your email and possibly your phone number.

Once you're in, navigate to your account settings and generate an API key. Save it, because you only see it once. It looks like this:

```
nvapi-xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx
```

You get 1,000 free inference credits on signup, with up to 5,000 available on request, and a rate limit of 40 requests per minute. No credit card required.

Read about some of the [issues with Cursor](https://blog.gopenai.com/stop-paying-20-month-use-nvidia-build-80-free-ai-models-0b08205f91b5?sk=e3dec0158ca29b1c2f1231e5dc6b0eab).

In Cursor, go to Settings → Models, enable the OpenAI API key toggle, paste [https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1](https://integrate.api.nvidia.com/v1) as the override base URL, and add your nvapi- key.

Setup takes under two minutes:

`nvapi-`

key