Pollinations
Pollinations is a hosted, OpenAI-compatible gateway that generates text, images, video, audio, realtime voice, embeddings and 3D models through a single API. Prepaid Pollen credits fund usage, and free credits arrive through community quests.
What is Pollinations?
Pollinations is a hosted generative-AI gateway that puts seven kinds of model output behind one endpoint and one API key. From gen.pollinations.ai a developer can generate text, images, video, audio including speech, music and transcription, realtime voice, vector embeddings and 3D models in GLB format. The platform is OpenAI-compatible: existing OpenAI SDK code works after changing the base URL, and the familiar chat completions, embeddings and image generation routes are all present. Simpler GET routes such as /image/{prompt} return a picture straight from a URL, which makes prototyping possible without writing code at all.
The catalogue is unusually broad. In August 2026 it listed 255 models from 49 vendor brands — 165 text, 44 image, 20 audio, 15 video, five embedding, four realtime and two 3D — spanning OpenAI, Google, Anthropic, Qwen, xAI, ByteDance, ElevenLabs, Meta, Mistral, DeepSeek, Cohere, Stability AI and Black Forest Labs among others. Discovery endpoints publish each model's price, capabilities and context window without requiring authentication.
Usage is paid for with Pollen, a prepaid in-service credit consumed request by request. A wallet holds two separate balances: Quest Pollen, earned through community quests, contribution rewards and promotional grants, and Paid Pollen, bought in top-up packs. There is no subscription.
What distinguishes Pollinations is who pays. Through BYOP, or Bring Your Own Pollen, an app asks its own users to authorise spending from their personal balances using OAuth with PKCE, so the developer never funds their users' inference. Developers can also switch on developer earnings, taking a markup credited to their own wallet whenever their app is used.
Around the API sit a polli command-line tool aimed at humans and agents, an MCP server for hosts such as Claude Desktop, Cursor and Windsurf, media upload storage, optional per-request safety filters that can redact personal data or secrets, and Community Models in alpha, where any signed-in user can publish their own compatible endpoint and set its price.
The codebase is open source, while the hosted commercial service is operated by Myceli.AI OU from Tallinn, Estonia. The site claims 10,000 weekly active developers, 1.5 million daily requests and more than 500 live community apps.
What it does
- Generate text with a fully OpenAI-compatible chat completions endpoint supporting streaming, tools, vision and structured output
- Create images from a plain GET request, returning JPEG, PNG or SVG
- Produce video as MP4 from a text prompt or a reference image
- Synthesise speech and music, or transcribe audio to text
- Run realtime voice and multimodal sessions over an OpenAI-compatible WebSocket
- Compute vector embeddings, with multimodal inputs on some models
- Generate 3D models delivered as binary glTF in GLB format
When to use Pollinations / When not to
A quick filter to help you decide if Pollinations is the right fit.
When to use Pollinations
- Independent developers and small teams who want to reach many models without signing a contract with each vendor
- Teams already built on an OpenAI SDK, since only the base URL and key have to change
- Builders of consumer-facing apps who want their users to pay for inference through BYOP rather than funding it themselves
- Prototypers and students, who can start on free quest credits before spending anything
- Projects that need several modalities at once, mixing text, image, video, audio and 3D in one codebase
When not to use Pollinations
- Regulated buyers who require certifications such as SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA, none of which are published
- Organisations that must pin data residency to one jurisdiction, since processing may occur in the EEA, the United States or elsewhere depending on the model chosen
- Teams needing a contractual uptime guarantee, as the stated 99.5% monthly target comes with no SLA credits
- Procurement processes that demand a publicly named subprocessor list, which is only available on request
- Anyone wanting a no-code product or a mobile app, because this is developer infrastructure with no published store apps
How to use Pollinations
A typical end-to-end flow, from setup to results.
- Create an account and generate an API key from the dashboard at enter.pollinations.ai
- Choose your key type: a secret sk_ key for server-side code, or a publishable pk_ App Key for the BYOP flow
- Authenticate each call with an Authorization Bearer header, or with a key query parameter for quick tests
- Browse the catalogue and its per-model prices through the discovery endpoints, which need no authentication
- Point an existing OpenAI SDK at the /v1 base URL and call chat completions as you normally would
- For a first image, simply request the /image/{prompt} URL in a browser with an optional model parameter
- Fund the wallet: complete quests for free Pollen, or buy a top-up pack from the dashboard
- Upload any images, audio or documents you want to use as generation context and reuse the returned URLs
- For a consumer app, implement BYOP with OAuth authorization-code and PKCE so users spend their own balance
- Optionally enable developer earnings on the App Key, then set spending caps or revoke app access from the dashboard
Pros & Cons
Pros
- A single endpoint and key replace separate contracts with many model vendors
- Migration cost is close to zero for anyone already using an OpenAI SDK
- Per-model prices are published and machine-readable without authentication
- A genuine free tier through quests, with no card required to start
- BYOP shifts inference cost to end users, so an app's growth does not bankrupt its developer
- Strictly prepaid, with no invoices, due dates or late fees, and a paid entry point at USD 2.00
- Prompts are not used for training without explicit opt-in, and only essential cookies are set
Cons
- No security certifications are published, so SOC 2, ISO 27001 and HIPAA requirements cannot be met
- Data residency is not guaranteed and varies with the model and provider selected
- A large part of the product is labelled beta and may change or disappear without notice, including wallet mechanics, earnings rates and quotas
- Model prices and Pollen rates may change at any time without notice
- Pollen is non-refundable once provisioned and expires after 12 months of account inactivity
- No public pricing page exists: top-up amounts only appear at checkout inside the dashboard
- Support runs on public GitHub Issues, Discord and email, with no dedicated ticketing and no SLA credits
Pricing & Plans
Pollinations operates on prepaid credit rather than subscription. A permanent free tier is available: Quest Pollen is granted for community quests, contribution rewards and promotional credits, and nine catalogue models are listed at zero price. The lowest paid entry point is a Pollen top-up pack of USD 2.00, with a service fee displayed before payment and applicable value added tax — the Estonian standard rate of 24% where relevant — added at checkout. Individual model prices are denominated in Pollen units and published through the public model-discovery endpoints. Payments are processed by Stripe Payments Europe, Limited.
- credit earned from community quests
- contribution rewards
- free grants and promotional or manual credits
- carrying no entitlement to future grants
- top-up packs of USD 2
- 5
- 10
- 20
- 50 and 100
- exclusive of service fee and tax
- with no automatic refill
- No subscription tier currently exists
- the refunds policy refers to paid subscriptions only as a possible future addition
Data, GDPR & hosting
A consolidated view of how Pollinations handles your data.
GDPR overview
GDPR implementation is concrete and documented rather than merely asserted. The privacy policy, updated 16 August 2026, names the controller as Myceli.AI OU, registry code 17186693, VAT EE102877908, in Tallinn, Estonia, and lists a lawful basis for each purpose: contract, legitimate interests, and legal obligation for billing and tax. Data subjects are offered access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability, objection to legitimate-interest processing and withdrawal of consent, with complaints directed to a local authority or the Estonian Data Protection Inspectorate. A Data Processing Addendum including EU Standard Contractual Clauses is available, subprocessor categories are published with at least 14 days' notice of material change, only essential cookies are used, and the minimum age is 16. No Article 27 representative is designated, which is consistent with a controller established inside the EU. Rights requests go to hello@pollinations.ai.
Who owns the data?
Customers keep ownership of what they submit. The terms state plainly that you retain all rights to your Customer Data, while Pollinations and its licensors own the service, the models and the documentation. Responsibility splits in two: for the website, accounts, billing, wallet, app authorisation and abuse prevention, Myceli.AI OU acts as data controller; when it processes Customer Data on your behalf through the API, it acts as processor under a Data Processing Addendum that incorporates the EU Standard Contractual Clauses. Feedback you send may be used to improve the service. Where you authorise a third-party app, that app handles your prompts and outputs under its own terms, not under Pollinations' control.
Reuse rights
Outputs are yours to use, but the licence you actually hold depends on the model you picked rather than on Pollinations. The terms warn explicitly that model licences vary and must be verified before commercial use, so there is no single blanket permission covering all 255 catalogue models. On the vendor's own side the commitments are narrow and clear: prompts and outputs are processed transiently to deliver a result, generated responses may sit in short-lived caches, and no prompt or output is used to train or fine-tune models without explicit opt-in. Personal data is not sold. Media you upload is retrievable by URL for a rolling 30-day lifecycle. Practically, you may reuse your generations without asking Pollinations for permission, provided the underlying model's licence allows it.
Data retention & training
Hosting summary
Hosting location is deliberately flexible rather than fixed. The terms state that, depending on the model, provider and availability selected, Customer Data may be processed in the EEA, the United States or other locations where the model and infrastructure providers operate. Where personal data leaves the EEA, approved safeguards apply, specifically EU Standard Contractual Clauses with appropriate supplementary measures. Subprocessors are disclosed by category rather than by name: payments and merchant of record, CDN, WAF and edge routing, cloud infrastructure and storage, analytics and data pipeline, and model or inference compute providers. The full named list is available on request, with at least 14 days' notice of material changes. Stripe Payments Europe and Tinybird are named elsewhere in the documentation. Uploaded media is served from a dedicated media subdomain. No customer-selectable hosting region is documented. Security measures cited include encryption in transit, encryption at rest where applicable, access controls and incident response. Note that the domain resolves to a Cloudflare anycast address, which indicates edge routing rather than any actual processing location.
Things to keep in mind
Risks and trade-offs to weigh before adopting Pollinations.
- A broad beta perimeter means wallet mechanics, reward structures, earnings rates, model availability and quotas can be modified or withdrawn at any time with only in-product notice
- Model prices and Pollen rates may change without notice, and only the figure shown at top-up or in the pre-flight estimate applies to that transaction
- Pollen expires after twelve months of account inactivity and is not refundable once provisioned, so buying large balances ahead of need carries real loss
- Because data may be processed in the EEA, the United States or elsewhere depending on the model chosen, an unexamined model switch can quietly change your compliance position
- Model licences vary across the catalogue and must be checked individually before any commercial use of generated output
- Support runs partly through public GitHub Issues, so it is easy to disclose sensitive details in a permanently public place
- Authorising a third-party app hands it spending power and prompt access under its own terms, so an approval given casually can be costly; caps and revocation exist but must be used
Setup & Integrations
Technical difficulty
Low for a developer, and effectively zero for a first look: requesting an image URL in a browser needs no code, and model listings are readable without a key. A team already using an OpenAI SDK integrates by changing a base URL and a key, and the documentation offers a five-line Python example. Nothing has to be self-hosted. Difficulty concentrates in one place, the BYOP flow, which requires implementing OAuth authorization-code with PKCE and handling scopes, budgets and expiry. There is no no-code app builder: the dashboard manages keys, balance, apps and quests only.
Deployment
Integrations
Supported languages
Behind Pollinations
Fundraising
Social
Resources
All the official URLs gathered for verification and reference.
Frequently asked questions
What can Pollinations actually generate?
How many models are available?
Is it compatible with the OpenAI SDK?
Is there a free option?
What does it cost to start paying?
Is there a subscription?
Are my prompts used to train models?
Where is my data processed?
Who operates the service and under which law?
Can I make my users pay for their own usage?
Should you pick Pollinations?
Pollinations answers a real problem with unusual directness: instead of negotiating and wiring up a dozen model vendors, a developer points an existing OpenAI SDK at one base URL and reaches 255 models across text, image, video, audio, realtime voice, embeddings and 3D. Prices per model are public and queryable without even holding a key, which is rarer than it should be.
Its most original idea is economic rather than technical. BYOP lets an application ask its own users to spend their personal Pollen balance, and developer earnings pay the developer a markup on top. Together they invert the usual constraint on consumer AI apps, where success and inference bills grow at the same rate. Combined with free quest credits and a USD 2.00 paid entry point, the barrier to a first working prototype is close to nothing.
The reservations are about maturity, not capability. No security certification is published, the named subprocessor list is only available on request, data residency follows whichever model you select, and the 99.5% availability target carries no SLA credits. A wide band of the product is explicitly beta and may change without notice, from wallet mechanics to earnings rates, while Community Models remain in alpha. Pollen is non-refundable once provisioned and expires after twelve months of inactivity.
That balance points clearly at an audience. For indie developers, students, prototypes and consumer apps that benefit from users funding their own usage, Pollinations is genuinely compelling and unusually cheap to try. For regulated workloads needing certifications, pinned jurisdictions or contractual uptime, it is not yet the right tool. Read the terms on beta scope and pricing changes before building anything you cannot afford to see move.
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