How to use AI in n8n for free: Step-by-step Guide
This guide walks you through connecting OpenRouter to n8n for free, generating an API key, selecting a suitable model, and instantly building AI‑powered workflows without spending any credits, letting you prototype and experiment cost‑free.
How to use AI in n8n for free: Step-by-step Guide
Integrating high-performance AI models into n8n meant subscribing to paid plans with companies like OpenAI or Anthropic.
This often created a significant barrier for entry, especially for prototyping, testing, or smaller projects. But a free alternative has arrived, making top-tier AI accessible to everyone using n8n: OpenRouter.
Why does this matter?
OpenRouter is a unified API for accessing various Large Language Models (LLMs) from different providers.
While it offers access to paid models, OpenRouter provides access to several "free-tier" versions of leading models:
- Qwen 3 (Alibaba): A model series optimized for multilingual support and complex logical reasoning tasks.
- Llama 3 (Meta): Meta’s open-weights model designed for general-purpose reasoning and high-efficiency performance.
- Google Gemma 3: The latest open model from Google, which includes native multimodal capabilities for processing text and images.
- GPT-OSS 120B (OpenAI): A large-scale open-weight model from OpenAI specifically tuned for autonomous agentic workflows.
