freebuff

Freebuff is a coding agent that costs nothing to use, and the way it pays for itself is text ads. Five products share one account: a CLI, a desktop app that runs parallel agents locally, a web builder, a cloud runner that works on any GitHub repository, and a chat. Apache-2.0, and you start with npm install -g freebuff. No subscription, no credits, no API key.

The model catalog is the interesting part. GPT-5.6 Luna is the default, DeepSeek V4 Flash handles fast coding, MiMo 2.5 is the unmetered fallback that costs no session at all, and GLM 5.3 Flash is the deep-reasoning pick capped at two sessions a day. Models may serve from a quantized Q8_0 build, which the project states up front rather than burying. Under the hood it runs specialized agents rather than one model and one prompt, orchestrated by Codebuff, the same team's open framework.

Access depends on where you are. Supported regions get full access; other regions and VPN users get limited access, currently MiMo 2.5 with three one-hour sessions a day, earnable up to seven. Solo devs and students: a real way to use a capable coding agent with no card on file. Small teams: fine for side projects, but the session caps will bite in a real sprint. Companies: keep this away from proprietary code.

That last line is the catch and it deserves to be blunt. Freebuff's own data-use notice says it uses prompts, messages, code, files, and repository data to run the service, and that it may analyze prompts and messages, including anything you paste, to personalize ads. Where the law does not require an opt-out, that processing may be a condition of using the free service, and some models may retain submissions for training. Uploads and connected repositories are excluded from ad providers. Your prompts are not. Nothing here is free. You pay with what you type, and for anything under an NDA that is too much.