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Laguna S 2.1 Free

Laguna S 2.1 Free is the free version of Laguna S 2.1 on AI Gateway, with a context window of 256K tokens. It serves the same open-weight agentic coding model as the paid version, at a smaller window. Call it with poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free. Your use is subject to Poolside's Terms & Privacy Policies.

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Price
Free
24h uptime
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import { streamText } from 'ai'


const result = streamText({
  model: 'poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free',
  prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?'
})
Read docs

Copy link to headingPlayground

Try out Laguna S 2.1 Free by Poolside. Usage is billed to your team at API rates. Free users (those who haven't made a payment) get $5 of credits every 30 days.

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Laguna S 2.1 Free

Copy link to headingProviders

Route requests across multiple providers. Copy a provider slug to set your preference. Visit the docs for more info. Using a provider means you agree to their terms, listed under Legal.

Provider
Context
Max Output
Latency
Throughput
Input
Output
Cache
Web Search
Capabilities
ZDR
No Training
Free Tier
Release Date
Poolside
Free
Legal:Terms•Privacy
256K33K1.6 s66 tps
Free
Free
—
07/21/2026

Copy link to headingUptime

Direct request success rate on AI Gateway and per-provider. Visit the docs for more info.

Copy link to headingThroughput

P50 throughput on live AI Gateway traffic, in tokens per second (TPS). Visit the docs for more info.

Copy link to headingLatency

P50 time to first token (TTFT) on live AI Gateway traffic, in milliseconds. View the docs for more info.

Getting started

Call Laguna S 2.1 Free through AI Gateway with the AI SDK generateText and streamText functions, or through the OpenAI Chat Completions, OpenAI Responses, and Anthropic Messages APIs by changing the base URL. AI Gateway authenticates the request and routes it to an available provider.

Install the AI SDK (pnpm add ai dotenv), create an API key from the API Keys page, and set it as AI_GATEWAY_API_KEY in your environment. Full setup is covered in the text generation quickstart.

index.ts
import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';


async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
  });


  console.log(result.text);
}


main().catch(console.error);

Top-level parameters

The same Laguna S 2.1 Free request in each API format AI Gateway supports.

top-level-params.ts
import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';


async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free',
    system: 'You are a concise technical assistant.',
    prompt: 'Summarize the tradeoffs between static generation and SSR.',
    maxOutputTokens: 1024,
  });


  console.log(result.text);
}


main().catch(console.error);

Standard parameters like prompt, messages, temperature, and tools work as documented in the AI SDK docs. These are the parameters with model-specific behavior.

ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
modelstringYesModel ID in the form creator/model, e.g. poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free. AI Gateway routes the request to an available provider.
maxOutputTokensnumberNoHard cap on generated tokens. Laguna S 2.1 Free supports up to 32,768 output tokens. Reasoning tokens count toward this limit.
reasoning'provider-default' | 'none' | 'minimal' | 'low' | 'medium' | 'high' | 'xhigh'NoProvider-agnostic reasoning effort, available in AI SDK 7 or later. Maps to the provider’s native reasoning configuration; reasoning settings under providerOptions take precedence when both are set. See the Reasoning section below.
providerOptionsRecord<string, JSONValue>NoAI Gateway routing options under gateway, plus any provider-native options under the provider’s own namespace — see the table below.

Input limits

InputFormatsSourcesMax countMax sizeLimits
Text————Prompt and response share the 256K-token context window

Provider options

Set AI Gateway routing options under providerOptions.gateway. For provider-specific options, pass them under the provider’s namespace as documented by the AI SDK.

Learn more in the AI SDK provider docs.

provider-options.ts
import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';


async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free',
    prompt: 'Why is the sky blue?',
    providerOptions: {
      gateway: {
        only: ['poolside'],
      },
    },
  });


  console.log(result.text);
}


main().catch(console.error);

These AI Gateway routing options apply to every model. Provider-specific options pass through under the provider’s own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) exactly as documented by the AI SDK.

ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
providerOptions.gateway.onlystring[]NoRestrict routing to these provider slugs. Requests fail over only within the listed providers.
providerOptions.gateway.orderstring[]NoPreferred provider order. Listed providers are tried first; unlisted providers remain available as fallbacks.
providerOptions.gateway.sort'cost' | 'ttft' | 'tps'NoRank candidate providers by price, time to first token, or tokens per second instead of the default routing order.
providerOptions.gateway.zeroDataRetentionbooleanNoRoute only to providers with a zero-data-retention policy for this model.

Routing across providers

AI Gateway serves the same model through multiple providers and fails over automatically. order expresses a preference while keeping every provider eligible; only is a hard allowlist — if none of the listed providers are available the request fails instead of falling back.

Options under a provider's own namespace (for example providerOptions.anthropic) are forwarded to that provider with the request. Providers ignore option namespaces that don't apply to them, so it is safe to set provider options alongside gateway routing options.

Reasoning

AI Gateway bridges reasoning across every API format. The AI SDK exposes a provider-agnostic top-level reasoning level (none, minimal, low, medium, high, or xhigh); the Chat Completions and Responses formats take the same effort under reasoning.effort; and the Anthropic Messages format uses a native thinking token budget. Whichever you send, the gateway maps it to the target model’s native configuration, converting between effort levels and token budgets as needed. Reasoning-related settings under providerOptions take full precedence over the top-level reasoning value and are never merged. Reasoning tokens typically count toward your output-token usage, though how they’re reported and billed varies by provider.

Learn more in the AI Gateway reasoning guide.

reasoning.ts
import { generateText } from 'ai';
import 'dotenv/config';


async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free',
    prompt: 'Explain the Monty Hall problem step by step.',
    reasoning: 'high',
  });


  console.log(result.text);
}


main().catch(console.error);

Tool calling

Expose tools the model can call. Define each tool’s inputs with a Zod schema.

tool-calling.ts
import { generateText, tool } from 'ai';
import { z } from 'zod';
import 'dotenv/config';


async function main() {
  const result = await generateText({
    model: 'poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free',
    prompt: 'What is the weather in San Francisco?',
    tools: {
      getWeather: tool({
        description: 'Get the current weather for a location',
        inputSchema: z.object({ location: z.string() }),
        execute: async ({ location }) => ({ location, temperatureC: 18 }),
      }),
    },
  });


  console.log(result.text);
}


main().catch(console.error);

Copy link to headingMore models by Poolside

Model
Context
Latency
Throughput
Input
Output
Cache
Web Search
Capabilities
Providers
ZDR
No Training
Free Tier
Release Date
poolside/laguna-s-2.1
1M0.5 s122 tps
$0.10/M
$0.20/M
Read$0.01/M
—
poolside logo
07/20/2026

Copy link to headingAbout Laguna S 2.1 Free

Laguna S 2.1 Free became available on AI Gateway on July 21, 2026, alongside the paid version. Both entries serve Laguna S 2.1, an open-weight Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model that Poolside built for agentic coding and released on Hugging Face under the OpenMDW-1.1 license. The listed difference between the two is access: Laguna S 2.1 Free carries a context window of 256K tokens, and the paid version carries a 1M-token window.

That makes Laguna S 2.1 Free the version to reach for first. Point an existing agent at it, run your own tasks, and judge the output before you commit to the paid version. Laguna S 2.1 scores 70.2% on Terminal-Bench 2.1 with thinking enabled, so a short evaluation on real repository work tells you quickly whether the model suits your harness and prompts.

A context window of 256K tokens covers a lot of practical work: focused bug fixes, single-service refactors, test repair, and terminal tasks that finish in a bounded number of steps. It runs short when an agent reads broadly across a large repository or keeps a session going for hours. Watch context usage in AI Gateway reporting and treat the first truncation as the signal to switch.

AI Gateway expanded capacity for both the free and paid versions after launch, so evaluation runs and batch experiments on Laguna S 2.1 Free have more room than they did at release. Capacity describes how much traffic the endpoint accepts, not how well the model performs.

Set the model to poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free in the AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python. To try Laguna S 2.1 Free inside a coding agent, run vercel ai-gateway setup, then select poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free in the agent's model configuration. Moving to the paid version later means changing one model string.

Copy link to headingWhat To Consider When Choosing a Provider

  • Configuration: Pick a version by context budget, not by expected answer quality. Agent sessions grow quickly once terminal output, file contents, and tool results accumulate, so measure a representative run before you decide. If those runs stay inside 256K tokens, Laguna S 2.1 Free covers them. If they don't, move to the paid version at laguna-s-2.1, which supports a 1M-token window.
  • Zero Data Retention: Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider and model basis. See the documentation for details.
  • Authentication: AI Gateway authenticates requests using an API key or OIDC token. You do not need to manage provider credentials directly.

Copy link to headingWhen to Use Laguna S 2.1 Free

Best for

  • First Evaluation Runs: Testing Laguna S 2.1 on your own repositories before you commit to it
  • Coding Agent Prototypes: Early scaffolding where prompts stay well inside 256K tokens
  • Side-by-Side Model Comparisons: Benchmarking against other models you already route through AI Gateway
  • Bounded Terminal Tasks: Focused build, test, and repair work that finishes in a limited number of steps
  • Demos and Workshops: Sessions that need a working agentic coding model on short notice

Consider alternatives when

  • Long-Horizon Agent Sessions: Runs that outgrow 256K tokens belong on the paid version at laguna-s-2.1
  • Whole-Repository Prompts: Large codebases sent in a single request exceed the window this version allows
  • Sustained Production Traffic: The paid version is the endpoint to standardize on once a workload ships
  • Image or Audio Input: Laguna S 2.1 takes text only, so multimodal work needs a model such as Inkling
  • Broad General Assistance: Agentic coding is the target, not open-domain chat or factual recall

Copy link to headingConclusion

Laguna S 2.1 Free exists so you can evaluate Laguna S 2.1 on real work before you standardize on it. Run your agent against it, measure how much context a typical session consumes, and move to laguna-s-2.1 when sessions outgrow 256K tokens.

Copy link to headingFrequently Asked Questions

  • What is the difference between Laguna S 2.1 Free and the paid version?

    The context window. Laguna S 2.1 Free supports 256K tokens, and laguna-s-2.1 supports 1M tokens. Both entries serve the same Laguna S 2.1 model.

  • Is Laguna S 2.1 Free a smaller or distilled model?

    No. Laguna S 2.1 Free serves the same Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) model Poolside released for agentic coding, at a smaller context window. Quality within that window matches the paid version.

  • When should I switch to the paid version?

    Switch when agent sessions run out of context. Long terminal runs, whole-repository reads, and multi-hour agent loops accumulate more than 256K tokens. Everything else fits here.

  • How much traffic can Laguna S 2.1 Free handle?

    AI Gateway expanded capacity for both the free and paid versions after launch, which raised how many requests each endpoint accepts. Current limits and live usage appear in your AI Gateway dashboard.

  • How do I call Laguna S 2.1 Free through AI Gateway?

    Set the model to poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free in the AI SDK, Chat Completions API, Responses API, Messages API, or other API formats, from TypeScript or Python. Switching to the paid version later means changing that one string.

  • Can I use Laguna S 2.1 Free in a coding agent?

    Yes. Run vercel ai-gateway setup to connect your agents to AI Gateway, then select poolside/laguna-s-2.1-free in the agent's model configuration. See the coding agents guide at https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/coding-agents.

  • Does Laguna S 2.1 Free run in thinking mode?

    Yes. Laguna S 2.1 runs in thinking and no-thinking modes, and thinking is enabled by default. Thinking raises its Terminal-Bench 2.1 score from 60.4% to 70.2%.

  • Does AI Gateway support Zero Data Retention for Laguna S 2.1 Free?

    Zero Data Retention is not currently available for this model. Zero Data Retention is offered on a per-provider basis. See https://vercel.com/docs/ai-gateway/capabilities/zdr for details.

  • What does Laguna S 2.1 Free cost?

    Current rates appear in the pricing panel on this page. AI Gateway mirrors provider pricing with no markup and adds no platform fee on inference, including on Bring Your Own Key requests.