Three free sites cover the whole stack. Chat with every frontier model, run image and video generation on your own machine, and produce multimodal design assets. No subscriptions, no card. You can test all three in ten minutes.
Add up what your business pays for AI right now. A chat plan here. An image tool there. Something for video. Each one is twenty or thirty a month, and the total creeps past a hundred before you notice.
Most of that spend is for evaluation, not production. You are paying to find out which model is good enough, not because you have committed to one.
Three free sites let you do that testing for zero. One runs models locally. One routes you to every frontier chatbot. One builds images, video, audio, and 3D.
What These Three Sites Cover
Each site solves a different job, so they stack rather than compete.
Pinokio installs open-source AI tools on your own computer with one click. LMArena gives you free chat access to the top commercial models, side by side. Design Arena generates finished creative assets from anonymous models you then rate.
Read them in that order. Local first, chat second, creative third. That is roughly the order a business owner needs them in.
Site One: Install Any AI Tool On Your Own Machine
Pinokio is a free, open-source launcher for AI apps. Windows, macOS, and Linux. You browse a directory, click install, and it does the rest.
The reason this matters: most useful open-source AI tools are a nightmare to set up. Cloning a repo, matching Python versions, installing the right libraries, fixing the one dependency that breaks everything. Pinokio does all of that in the background. You get a button.
The apps run on your hardware, not a server. That means no per-image fee, no monthly seat, and your files never leave the machine. For client work where the data cannot go to a public tool, that last part is the whole point.
What you can install through it: image generators, video tools, audio and voice models, transcription, text tools, and more. Dozens of them, each maintained as a small file you can share or version.
Your first run. Go to pinokio.co and download the app for your system. Open it. Pick one image generator from the directory and click install. Let it finish, then launch it and make one image. That is the full loop. You now have a working local generator that costs nothing per use.
The catch that stops people. These tools run on your machine, so your machine has to be able to run them. A recent laptop handles the light tools fine. The heavy video and image models want a real graphics card, and on a thin machine they crawl or fail. Check the app's requirements before you install it, not after. If you want serious local video specifically, here is the free generator worth starting with.
Site Two: Chat With Every Frontier Model, Free
LMArena is a public site where you chat with the top commercial models at no cost. Claude, Gemini, GPT, Grok, DeepSeek, Llama, and more, all in one place.
It was built to rank models. You send a prompt, two anonymous models answer, you pick the better reply, and your vote feeds a public leaderboard. But you can also just use it as a free door to models you would otherwise pay for.
Two modes matter for you. Side-by-side, where one prompt goes to two models so you can compare answers directly. And direct, where you pick a single model and talk to it straight.
This is the cheapest way to answer one expensive question: which model is actually best for the thing my business does. Run your real prompt, your real client scenario, your real quoting or drafting task, through several models before you commit a cent to any of them.
Your first run. Go to lmarena.ai. Paste in a task you do every week. A follow-up email, a summary of a messy thread, a first draft of a proposal. Read the two answers. Pick the one that needed the least fixing. Do that three times and you will know which model earns your subscription.
The catch that stops people. In side-by-side mode you do not always get to pick the two models. The point of the site is blind comparison, so it hands you a matchup. Use direct mode when you need a specific model. And treat everything you type here as public. It is a research tool, not a private workspace, so keep real client data out of it. For running many models at once inside your own setup instead, this walkthrough covers a tool that does exactly that.
Site Three: Generate Images, Video, Audio, and 3D
Design Arena is a free site for creative generation. UIs, images, video, audio, 3D models, even small games. It is backed by Y Combinator and works the same way as the chat arena. You describe what you want, two anonymous models build it, and you rate the results.
For an operator this is the fastest way to get a usable asset without opening five different paid tools. You need a hero image, a short clip, a quick 3D object, a rough landing-page layout. One prompt, two takes, pick the one that fits.
Because it routes to many models under the hood, you are effectively test-driving the whole market of generators for a single job. If one model nails your brand look, that tells you where to spend later.
Your first run. Go to designarena.ai. Describe one real asset you actually need this week. Keep it concrete: "a clean landing-page header for a bookkeeping firm, navy and white, no stock-photo look." Generate. Compare the two. Save the better one. You just produced a usable draft for zero.
The catch that stops people. Free generation is generous, not infinite. Expect rate limits and busy-hour slowdowns, and treat the output as a strong first draft rather than a final file. The value is speed and comparison, not a polished deliverable straight out of the box.
Which Site For Which Job
If you are not sure which one to open, use this.
| You need to | Open | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Run generation on your own hardware, private | Pinokio | Installs local tools in one click, nothing leaves your machine |
| Test which chat model is best for a task | LMArena | Free side-by-side access to every frontier model |
| Produce an image, clip, or layout fast | Design Arena | Multimodal generation from many models, rate and keep |
Most operators end up using all three, but for different weeks. Pinokio when privacy or volume matters. LMArena when you are deciding what to buy. Design Arena when you need an asset by end of day.
What Free Actually Costs You Here
Free is real here, but it is not free of trade-offs. Know them before you build anything important on top of these.
Privacy is the first. LMArena and Design Arena are public research tools. Assume anything you type or generate can be seen and used to rank models. Do not put a client's confidential material into either. Pinokio is the private option because it runs locally, and that is exactly why it exists.
Reliability is the second. Free arenas have rate limits and get slow when everyone piles in. They are excellent for testing and one-off assets. They are not a system you would route a daily client workflow through without a paid fallback.
Model choice is the third. The arenas favor blind comparison, so you cannot always summon one exact model on demand. If your work depends on a specific model every time, use the direct modes or a paid account for that one, and keep the arenas for evaluation.
None of that cancels the point. For testing, comparing, and one-off creation, these three cover the ground that a hundred a month usually buys.
If You Do One Thing This Week
Open LMArena and run one real task through it. Not a demo prompt. The actual email or draft or summary you were about to pay a model to write.
Pick the answer that needed the least cleanup. That single test tells you whether your current subscription is the right one, or whether you have been paying for a model you would not have chosen in a blind test.
If it turns out you like a free answer better than the one you pay for, you just found money. If you like your paid one better, you spent five minutes and now you know it is worth it.