Staked free tier

Sellers that offer free models usually cap them, for example 1,000 requests a day per buyer address. If you lock ANTS in a seller's pool, that seller raises your cap or removes it. Your stake also earns pool rewards like any other staking position.

Only stake in that seller's own pool counts. Stake in seller A's pool raises your limit on seller A and nowhere else; to raise your limit on seller B, stake in seller B's pool.

Default program

Each seller sets its own program. Sellers that don't change it use this default:

Staking power	≈ ANTS locked for one year	Free allowance
Below 520,000	Below 10,000	The seller's base limit
520,000	10,000	5× the base limit
2,600,000	50,000	20× the base limit
10,400,000	200,000	Unlimited

Staking power is ANTS × epochs of lock remaining, where one epoch is one week. 10,000 ANTS locked for 52 weeks has 520,000 power; 20,000 ANTS locked for 26 weeks has the same. Power is what the seller pool already uses for rewards, so the rules follow from the staking contract:

• A new position has no power until it activates in the next epoch.
• Power shrinks every week as the lock runs down. Extend the lock or enable max lock (a constant 104 epochs of power) to keep your tier.
• Withdrawing before the lock ends burns part of the principal.

Programs per model

A seller can set a different program for each model, with its own limits and its own counters. Using up one model's free limit leaves your allowance on the seller's other models untouched.

• Free for stakers: a model can be free only for buyers whose stake reaches one of its tiers. Without enough stake, a free model refuses you, and the refusal says how much stake unlocks it.
• Stake or pay: a priced model can have a free allowance. Requests it covers are free, with no payment channel and no charge. The rest are paid at the listed price, as usual. You need a deposit only for requests past the allowance.

Check a seller's program

Sellers sign their limits and tiers into their peer metadata, and every Antseed app shows them next to the seller's free models:

• Desktop: on a model's page, each seller's row shows that model's program. Examples: "1,000 free requests a day", "Free for stakers", or after a price, "200 free requests a day, then paid". The Stake for more, Free for stakers or Free allowance tag lists the tiers in requests and opens staking on that seller's pool.
• Gateway: model lists mark models that are free, Free for stakers or have a Free allowance. In a model's provider list and on a provider's page, each model's program has an ⓘ with its tiers and a Stake in this seller's pool link.

When you run out, the desktop app and the gateway chat say which seller's limit ran out, when it resets and the next tier, with a link to stake in that seller's pool.

Antscan lists every seller that announces a program, with its free services:

Terminal

curl https://antscan.co/api/free-tier
curl "https://antscan.co/api/free-tier?seller=0x<sellerAddress>"

Each entry has the base limits (maxRequestsPerAddress, maxRequestsPerIp, windowMs), the seller's onChainAgentId, and stakeTiers with minPower, antsLockedForYear, multiplier and maxRequests per window.

When you hit a limit, your buyer returns HTTP 429 with code: "free_tier_exhausted" and a free_tier object: the seller's peerId, limitedBy, limit, windowMs, retryAfterSeconds, its stakeTiers, its baseLimit (what the tier multipliers apply to), stakersOnly, and your current stakePower in that seller's pool. The message names the next tier. On a model that is free only for stakers, limitedBy is stake_required.

Stake on a seller

The easiest way is the ANTS dashboard. Connect your wallet there and stake into the seller's pool. The stake links in the desktop app and the gateway open that seller's pool directly:

Terminal

antseed ants

From the CLI, stake into the seller's agent pool for a number of weeks:

Terminal

antseed ants pools                                         # find the seller's agent id
antseed ants stake 10000 --agent <agentId> --epochs 52

The new allowance starts once the position activates in the next epoch. Sellers cache stake lookups for up to 10 minutes.

Share stake with a buyer

Stake held by your buyer identity's own address counts automatically. Stake in any other wallet, yours or someone else's, counts once that wallet signs a code for your buyer address.

The staker opens the ANTS dashboard (antseed ants, desktop Rewards → Manage staking, or the gateway's Staking page), goes to My positions → Share free tier, enters the buyer address and signs. The signature costs no gas and moves no funds. It names that one buyer address and lasts 30, 90 or 365 days. The dashboard shows a code starting with antseed-free-tier- to send to the buyer.

The buyer adds the code:

• CLI: antseed buyer free-tier add <code>. Add --identity <name> for a named buyer identity.
• Desktop: Rewards → Staked free tier. Paste the code and select Add code.
• Gateway: Staking → Staked free tier → Add code (workspace admins). The panel shows the workspace's buyer address to send to the staker.

A running buyer picks the code up within a minute and sends it to sellers with its requests. To renew, the staker signs a new code and the buyer adds it. The new code replaces the old one.

If the staking wallet is on the same machine as the buyer, antseed buyer free-tier share opens a local page where that wallet signs, with no code to copy.

Several wallets can share with the same buyer, up to 8. Their stake adds up with the buyer's own, so two wallets with 5,000 ANTS each locked for a year reach the 10,000 ANTS tier together.

Terminal

antseed buyer free-tier list               # stakers sharing with this buyer
antseed buyer free-tier remove 0x<staker>  # stop sending one

A code shares the staker's wallet, not one position: every position that wallet holds in a seller's pool counts, including stake it adds later, until the code expires. A position the staker transfers stops counting for your buyer and counts for its new owner instead, carrying the allowance already used on it.

A code names one buyer, so nobody else can use it. Removing it stops your buyer sending it, and sellers stop counting it from the buyer's next free request. A staker can't revoke a code once signed: the buyer could keep sending it until it expires. To stop a code counting before then, move or withdraw the stake. Sellers notice when their cached stake lookups refresh, normally within ten minutes.

See when your tier drops

Power shrinks every week, so a tier you reach today can drop as the lock runs down, or when a staker's code expires. Every app shows where you stand:

• Desktop: Rewards → Staked free tier lists the stake each seller counts for you and until when ("Counts as 12,000 ANTS for a year, shrinking weekly until Mar 3, 2027"). On a model's page, the Stake for more tooltip says what you get there and when it changes, for example "You get unlimited until Dec 14, 2026, then 1,000 a day."
• Gateway: Staking → Staked free tier has the same list per seller pool, and the ⓘ next to a model's program shows the workspace's standing.
• CLI: antseed buyer free-tier list prints the counted stake per seller pool after the stakers (--no-stake skips the chain read).

When a tier drops within four weeks, the tooltip suggests max lock: a max-locked position keeps 104 epochs of power until max lock is turned off, so its tier holds. If the stake is yours, the link opens that seller's pool; if a staker shared it, ask them to turn it on.

One allowance per staker

The seller counts usage on the staked positions, so all buyer addresses sharing the same stake share one allowance on that seller. A wallet that shares with five buyers and reaches a 5× tier gives them 5× the base limit together, not 5× each. Transferring a position to another wallet moves its used allowance with it. Staked buyers skip the seller's per-IP limit, so users behind a shared IP or a gateway are not cut off by each other.

If the seller can't read the chain, it falls back to the base limits for that request.

Running a seller? See Staked tiers to set or turn off your program.