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
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.