SambaNova drops the no-card $5 free-credit grant on SambaNova Cloud
SambaNova Cloud's Free plan no longer hands new developers $5 of API credit with no card required; it now asks users to add a payment method and purchase credits before making any requests.
Free plan: $5 in free API credits, no credit card required to start; initial credits expired after 30 days
Free plan: pay-as-you-go credits only, requires adding a payment method to purchase credits before running requests
Proof of change
SambaNova's pricing pages, as we captured them on two dates.
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Showing the whole page as captured — scroll either panel, or open it at full size.
Both images are our own captures, taken on the dates shown. The pixels are unmodified — nothing is retouched, and where a region is highlighted the marker is drawn over the image, not into it. Open either capture to see it at full resolution.
As of August 14, 2026, the SambaNova Cloud plans page (cloud.sambanova.ai/plans) no longer offers its previous no-card onboarding path. Every capture back through August 11, 2026 showed a Free tier that read “Start exploring SambaNova Cloud with free API credits. No credit card required,” included “$5 in free API credits,” and a page-wide banner promising “$5 of Free Credit… Initial credits will expire in 30 days.” That copy, the $5 wallet indicator, and the 30-day-expiry banner are all gone.
The Free card now reads “Start exploring SambaNova Cloud. Add a payment method and purchase credits to run your first requests,” and its included-features list has shrunk to “Pay-as-you-go credits,” “Access to Production models,” and “Community Support” — dropping the earlier “No credit card required to start” line entirely. The plan is still nominally priced at $0/month (no subscription fee), but there is no longer any way to call the SambaCloud API without first adding a card. The per-model token rate card on the separate Pricing page is unchanged. The Developer and Enterprise tiers’ feature lists are otherwise unaffected.
The SambaNova Cloud Free plan's 'no credit card required' $5 API credit grant is gone: the plans page now reads 'Add a payment method and purchase credits to run your first requests,' dropping the $5-credit, no-card-required, and 30-day-expiry language that was present as of August 11, 2026. Free is still $0 with no subscription fee, but there's no longer a way to call the API before adding a card. Token rates on the Pricing page are unchanged.