A cheap, easy desktop AI coding assistant
Up to 100M free tokens · China-direct APIs · Or fully local with zero API cost
中文 · English
Cheap, easy, double-click to start. The points that matter first:
| Advantage | What you get |
|---|---|
| Up to 100 million free tokens | Alibaba Cloud Bailian new-user campaign, claimed in-app (subject to official rules) |
| Those tokens actually work | Coding, image-data cleanup, image generation, video generation |
| China-domestic model APIs | Direct mainland endpoints — no VPN, no overseas-ban anxiety |
| DeepSeek is tiny money | A simple Flash job is about ¥0.12 |
| Or run fully local | Load a local model on your machine — spend nothing on APIs |
The free quota is from domestic Chinese clouds (Alibaba Qwen / Bailian), not an overseas account:
- Write and patch code — coding agent
- Sort and understand images / screenshots — multimodal / image-data work
- Generate images — e.g. Qwen Image
- Generate video — e.g. HappyHorse
Do not want the cloud at all? Turn on local inference. Completely free.
The coding engine is xAI’s Grok Build — the same generation of agents as DeepSeek Harness (DSH), Claude Code, Cursor, and OpenAI Codex: plan, edit files, run commands, loop until done.
The desktop UI is FreeCoder’s own frontend. We localized it for China: double-click install, domestic models by default, engine capability on par with upstream — not a chat skin.
The main path is China-direct APIs. We do not make overseas vendors the onboarding story.
- Alibaba Qwen (Bailian) — free quota + pay-as-you-go. LLM, multimodal, image, and video, all in China.
- DeepSeek — official China endpoint, low price, stable latency. Use Flash for everyday tasks.
Connect them in Settings. No VPN-required workflow, and daily use is not tied to overseas accounts that get banned.
Settings → Get API Key: sign in to Alibaba Cloud; FreeCoder helps create and fill in the Bailian key.
New users can claim 100 million+ free tokens via the official campaign (Alibaba’s current rules win). One key covers coding, multimodal, image, and video. Alibaba grants the quota; FreeCoder makes it usable immediately.
From the official Models & pricing page, CNY per million tokens:
| Model | Input (cache hit) | Input (cache miss) | Output |
|---|---|---|---|
| deepseek-v4-flash | ¥0.02 | ¥1 | ¥2 |
| deepseek-v4-pro | ¥0.025 | ¥3 | ¥6 |
Use Flash for small edits (bugfix, helper function, a short read). One pass is usually under 100k tokens. Conservative estimate, no cache hits:
| Item | Tokens | Unit price | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input | 80,000 | ¥1 / million | ¥0.08 |
| Output | 20,000 | ¥2 / million | ¥0.04 |
| Total | 100,000 | ¥0.12 |
A simple coding task is about twelve cents (CNY). ¥1 ≈ 8 tasks; ¥10 ≈ 80.
This is a high estimate: cache hits drop input to ¥0.02 / million. Use Pro for long jobs.
Prices follow the official page at the time you use it.
FreeCoder can load and run a local model on your machine. No cloud, no API key, still coding.
- Free — not billed per token
- Private — source stays on the PC
- Offline — no international network required
Use the cloud when you want stronger models, image/video, or the free quota. Everyday coding can stay local and cost nothing on APIs.
Double-click the installer. No toolchain, no engine compile.
- Free quota: claim Bailian in Settings → coding / image cleanup / image / video
- Cheaper domestic coding: DeepSeek Flash
- Zero cost: local inference
Permission modes: ask / auto / full trust. Tasks can keep running in the background.
Scan the QR code with WeChat, follow the official account, then send suggestions or issues.
Product code Apache-2.0. Agent engine upstream: Grok Build (Apache-2.0, see NOTICE).
FreeCoder is not an xAI product. Claude Code, Cursor, and Codex belong to their owners. Bailian quota and DeepSeek prices follow Alibaba Cloud and the DeepSeek tariff.