Dear Competition Organizers,
I recently learned about the Developer Competition and was very excited about it. However, after trying to work a bit with the API, I realized that the free tier API is not available in Germany. After looking up the pricing, I don’t think I can really participate in the competition.
The reason being that for testing purposes only, one test would cost about $1.40 which is about €1.29 (as of writing this email) and as a student, I don’t have the financial means to afford testing at these prices. Is there a way to use the API for free in Germany?
Despite this challenge, I am very interested in participating.
With kind regards,
Leon
Not right now, the free version of the API is only available in the US.
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Do you know if this is because of Google or the EU?
This probably has to do with EU laws.
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It is a combination of EU and Google, to be fair.
Google is offering the free-tier and, in exchange, reserves the right to use your prompts as training material for future models.
EU laws restrict what can be done with your data, including using it to train new models and moving the data outside of local jurisdictions.
You can take a look at Vertex AI, which also has a paid tier, but does offer cloud credits for new users. You may also wish to check to see if there are local student clubs that can offer opportunities. Finally, if you access it from services that run in an allowed region (such as running a Cloud Function in the US), you may be able to access the free tier (but you may also want to look at the legal issues surrounding that).
Finally, if you access it from services that run in an allowed region […], you may be able to access the free tier
So if I for example rent a VPS in the US and port every prompt through it, I could use the free tier?
Edit: I tried using a VPN which accually works. Thanks for your help.
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Yes.
But, again, you would need to ensure the legality of the data that you’re sending to the VPS.
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