Nscale

European GPU cloud. New accounts get a $5 credit, then pay-as-you-go.

Nscale is a European GPU cloud with serverless inference. New accounts get $5 of starter credit, then pay-as-you-go. There is no published RPM and no standing free catalogue of two models.

OpenAI-compatible at inference.api.nscale.com/v1, 128K context, no card to claim the credit. EU-hosted. Treat the five dollars as a trial, not a contract.

Free models: 2
Max context: 128K
Free tier: $5 starter credit
Requirement: Email account, no card

Endpoint

Base URLhttps://inference.api.nscale.com/v1

Env varNSCALE_API_KEY

Rate limit$5 starter credit, no published RPM

OpenAI-compatible
text

Code examples

npm install openai

import OpenAI from 'openai'

const client = new OpenAI({
  baseURL: 'https://inference.api.nscale.com/v1',
  apiKey: process.env.NSCALE_API_KEY
})

const response = await client.chat.completions.create({
  model: 'meta-llama/Llama-4-Scout-17B-Instruct',
  messages: [{ role: 'user', content: 'Explain closures in one paragraph.' }]
})

console.log(response.choices[0].message.content)

pip install openai

import os
from openai import OpenAI

client = OpenAI(
    base_url="https://inference.api.nscale.com/v1",
    api_key=os.environ["NSCALE_API_KEY"],
)

response = client.chat.completions.create(
    model="meta-llama/Llama-4-Scout-17B-Instruct",
    messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Explain closures in one paragraph."}],
)

print(response.choices[0].message.content)

curl https://inference.api.nscale.com/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $NSCALE_API_KEY" \
  -d '{
    "model": "meta-llama/Llama-4-Scout-17B-Instruct",
    "messages": [{"role": "user", "content": "Explain closures in one paragraph."}]
  }'

Worth knowing

Not a standing free catalogue — a $5 credit to start, then pay-as-you-go.

Models you get for free2

Llama 4 Scoutmeta-llama/Llama-4-Scout-17B-Instruct
Llama 3.3 70Bmeta-llama/Llama-3.3-70B-Instruct