One of the most common questions about auto blogging is: "Is AI expensive?" The answer: You can absolutely run an automated blog at zero cost thanks to the very generous free tiers offered by Groq and OpenRouter.

Groq API — Fastest and Freest

Groq is not an AI model company — they make AI inference chips for blazingly fast throughput. Groq runs open-source models (Llama, Mixtral, Gemma) at 300–700 tokens/second — 10–20x faster than OpenAI.

Groq Free Tier (as of May 2026):

  • Llama 3.3 70B: 14,400 requests/day, 500,000 tokens/day free
  • Llama 3.1 8B: 14,400 requests/day free
  • Gemma 2 9B: 14,400 requests/day free
  • Mixtral 8x7B: 14,400 requests/day free

With 500,000 free tokens/day, you can write approximately 500–700 blog posts of 800 words every day at absolutely no cost.

How to Get a Groq API Key:

  1. Visit console.groq.com
  2. Sign up for a free account
  3. Go to API Keys → Create API Key
  4. Copy the key and enter it in AutoBlogspot (Settings → API Keys → Groq)

OpenRouter — The AI API Marketplace

OpenRouter is a "supermarket" for APIs, aggregating many AI providers under one unified endpoint. Its best feature: multiple free-tier models and automatic fallback when one model hits its rate limit.

Free Models on OpenRouter:

  • Meta Llama 3.3 70B Free: Unlimited (with a soft rate limit)
  • Google Gemma 3 27B Free: Free
  • Mistral 7B Free: Free
  • DeepSeek R1 (distill): Free with long context

How to Use OpenRouter with AutoBlogspot:

  1. Sign up at openrouter.ai
  2. Go to Keys → Create key (you can optionally add $5 credit to access paid models)
  3. In AutoBlogspot → Settings → OpenRouter API Key → Paste key
  4. Select a model in your project: "openrouter/meta-llama/llama-3.3-70b-instruct:free"

Groq vs OpenRouter for Auto Blogging

  • Speed: Groq is 3–5x faster (dedicated inference chips)
  • Stability: OpenRouter is more stable thanks to multi-provider fallback
  • Model variety: OpenRouter offers far more models
  • Cost: Both have free tiers sufficient for medium-scale operations

Recommendation: Use Groq as primary (faster), OpenRouter as fallback when Groq hits its rate limit.

See also: Claude vs GPT vs Gemini for SEO Content Writing.

Configure Groq for free on AutoBlogspot →