Free AI Coding Agent Without API Keys or Monthly Subscriptions

A lot of people want to try AI coding, but the first step is often surprisingly annoying.

Find a coding agent. Create an account. Get an API key. Choose a model. Add billing. Then figure out how quickly you're burning through credits.

I built Clixad to skip most of that.

Clixad is a free cloud-based AI coding agent for the terminal, with a workflow similar to Claude Code and Codex.

You can give it a project and have it inspect the codebase, modify files, run commands, test changes and work through errors.

There is no need to bring your own API key and no mandatory monthly subscription.

Users get free credits, and can earn additional credits through advertiser-funded offers, forms and surveys. The revenue from those helps cover the AI inference costs.

The interesting part isn't really making AI inference magically free. It isn't.

It's changing who pays for it.

Instead of every user paying directly for model usage, the advertising side helps fund the usage. For someone who only needs an AI coding agent occasionally, that can make more sense than maintaining another subscription.

That's also why I don't position Clixad as a replacement for paid coding agents for heavy users. If you're using expensive models all day, a paid plan is probably still the better option.

I'm mainly targeting the people who want to build a side project, learn with AI, experiment with vibe coding, or just try an AI coding agent without first setting up an API account.

The question I'm testing now is whether removing that initial cost and setup actually gets more people to start building.

That's the reason I built Clixad.