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Get a free model key

Run the agent on the Free plan with a free key from Groq or Google AI Studio.

Mel's Free plan runs the agent on your own provider key. It comes with no Mel credits, so the agent answers once you add a key — and two providers give you one at no cost: Groq and Google AI Studio (Gemini). This page shows how to get either, where to paste it, and what "free" means at each. The limits and terms below are the providers' own, as their pages stated them on 5 October 2026; they can change them at any time, so their pages are the authority.

On Pro, Max or Business you don't need a key — the agent runs on your plan's credits. You can still add one on any plan: a turn on your own key costs 0 Mel credits.

Get a key from Groq

  1. Open console.groq.com/keys and sign in, or create a free Groq account.
  2. Create an API key and copy it.
  3. Paste it into Mel in the Groq row.

What free means at Groq. Groq's Free plan costs nothing and is limited by rate: requests and tokens per minute and per day, set per model and shared by everyone in your Groq organization. On 5 October 2026 its rate-limits page listed, for example, 30 requests a minute and 1,000 a day for openai/gpt-oss-120b. Your organization's exact limits are on Groq's limits page. Groq's data terms say it does not keep inference requests by default — only up to 30 days to troubleshoot a failure or investigate abuse — and does not train on customer data.

Get a key from Google AI Studio (Gemini)

  1. Open aistudio.google.com/apikey and sign in with a Google account.
  2. Create an API key and copy it.
  3. Paste it into Mel in the Gemini row.

What free means at Google. A key on a Google Cloud project without billing uses the Gemini API's free tier, which Google's terms call "unpaid services": no charge, with limits on requests per minute, tokens per minute and requests per day that vary by model and apply per project, not per key. Your project's limits are in AI Studio (aistudio.google.com/rate-limit). Two of Google's terms matter here (Gemini API Additional Terms of Service, last updated 28 April 2026, read 5 October 2026):

  • Google may use what you send. On unpaid services, Google uses the content you submit and the responses "to provide, improve, and develop Google products and services", and "human reviewers may read, annotate, and process your API input and output." Google's own advice is not to submit sensitive, confidential or personal information. With Mel, what you submit includes the files, command output and other tool results the agent reads in your project.
  • Not for the EEA, Switzerland or the UK. Google's terms say "You may use only Paid Services when making API Clients available to users in the European Economic Area, Switzerland, or the United Kingdom." If you are in one of those places, use a Groq key, or a Gemini key on a Google Cloud project with billing turned on.

Paste it into Mel

  1. Click the avatar in the top-right of the titlebar and choose Settings, then open AI and scroll to Provider API keys.
  2. Paste the key into its provider's row (Groq or Gemini) and click Save.
  3. Send your prompt. You can leave the model on Auto: when your own key is in use, Auto chooses among that provider's models only — Mel's keys are not used.

The key is stored on your device — in the operating system's keychain on macOS and Windows, and in a file only your user account can read on Linux. It travels with each agent request to Mel's relay, which uses it for that request and never stores or logs it; see the privacy policy. Signing out of Mel removes every key saved here, so you paste it again after you sign back in.

What changes, and what doesn't

  • Agent turns on your key cost 0 Mel credits. The provider's free-tier limits apply instead; when you reach one, the provider refuses requests until it resets. Adding a key from the other provider as well gives the agent a second set of limits.
  • Mel's own limits still apply. The fair-use ceiling (400 agent turns a day) and the Free plan's caps on features that run on Mel's keys — web search and command suggestions — stay as they are. See Billing & usage.
  • Conversations on your own key are not used for memory.

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