Is there a free trial, and what can I do with it?

Because it is real spend at real cost. $0.20 is enough to answer the only question a trial should answer — does this model draw what I need — without funding a farm of throwaway accounts. Prices here sit at or below the underlying API cost, so a generous free tier would be a straight subsidy rather than marketing.

It is deliberately not *credits*. Credit systems round every generation up to a whole credit, price a cheap draft the same as an expensive final, and expire what you do not use. Here $0.20 buys exactly $0.20 of generation, priced per model and per resolution.

On images, if you want the most information per cent: six generations on Nano Banana 2 Lite at $0.03 each tell you a lot about prompt adherence, and the model renders at a crisp 1K.

On video, if that is why you came: two 4-second silent clips on Veo 3.1 Lite at $0.10 each. Silent, because audio roughly doubles the price on the Veo family — hear the model first, add the soundtrack once you know the shot works.

What not to do is spend the whole thing on one 4K generation. The premium tiers differ from the draft tiers in polish, not in whether they understood the prompt, and a single result teaches you very little.

Nothing expires and nothing locks. The account stays exactly as it is, with the history and any API keys intact; generations simply stop until the balance is topped up.

Top-ups are in cryptocurrency, with no minimum and no plan attached. Deposits over $50 carry a +5% bonus and over $100 a +10% one, and a promo code adds a further +10% to whatever is credited. Card payments are not available yet — there is a waiting list on the top-up dialog, and interest is what decides whether that gets built.