Venice AI
Privacy-focused, lightly filtered AI chat, now a $1B company
Overview
Venice AI is a privacy-focused chat, image, video and code platform founded by Erik Voorhees, offering open models with no retention in Private mode, hardware-secured TEE and encrypted modes, and anonymised access to frontier models. Valued at $1B after a $65M Series A in July 2026; free plan, Pro from $18 a month.
Pricing
Pricing shown for reference only. These figures reflect RECATOOLS research as of 1 Oct 2026 and may be out of date or incomplete. This is not financial or purchasing advice — always confirm the current price on the provider’s official website before making any decision.
- 10 text prompts/day
- 15 image prompts/day
- API access paid with credits
- Unlimited text prompts
- 1,000 images/day
- 100 credits/mo
- TEE and end-to-end encrypted modes
- 7,500 credits/mo
- 2-month credit banking
- 22,500 credits/mo
- 3-month credit banking
- Highest image generation limits
What you can produce with Venice AI
- Private, TEE, end-to-end encrypted and Anonymous privacy modes
- Chat history stored in the browser, with encrypted backup
- Text, image, video, music and code generation across 370+ models
- OpenAI-compatible developer API, official CLI and MCP server
- x402 pay-per-request in USDC without an API key
- Minimal content filtering ("uncensored") vs mainstream chatbots
- Credit banking on paid tiers (2-3 months)
Venice's pitch is privacy plus minimal filtering, and it delivers more nuance than slogans suggest. Its Private mode runs open models under no-retention contracts, its TEE and encrypted modes on paid plans add hardware guarantees, and chat history stays in your browser. But reaching GPT, Claude or Gemini goes through an Anonymous mode where Venice warns the provider may store your prompts, and most of its catalogue carries that label — so pick models deliberately if privacy is the reason you are here. The company became a unicorn with a $65 million Series A in July 2026, and its developer tools — OpenAI-compatible API, CLI, MCP server and crypto micropayments — are now official. Pricing climbs from a usable free tier to $18, $68 and $200 a month. "Uncensored" output rules it out for compliance-minded teams; for individuals wanting fewer refusals and less tracking, it is a genuine middle ground.
What we found
Venice is a chat, image, video, music and code platform built around privacy and minimal content filtering. Erik Voorhees, the founder of ShapeShift, started it in 2024, and in July 2026 it raised a $65 million Series A led by Dragonfly, with Coinbase Ventures among the backers, valuing it at $1 billion — its first outside capital. Venice says it has 3.5 million registered users and serves two million API calls a day. Investors also received grants and warrants in VVV, Venice's crypto token, according to The Block.
The privacy story is more nuanced than "no logging". Venice now offers four modes. Private mode runs open models on infrastructure where Venice and its partners contract not to retain prompts — a trust-based promise, Venice itself says. TEE and end-to-end encrypted modes, on Pro and above, run inference inside secure hardware from NEAR AI Cloud and Phala Network, which is the stronger guarantee. But Anonymous mode, which reaches GPT, Claude, Gemini and other frontier models, strips your identity and still sends prompts to those providers, and Venice tells users to assume the provider keeps them. Most models in its catalogue of more than 370 carry that anonymised label rather than the private one. Chat history is stored in your browser, with optional encrypted backup.
The model line-up has moved on from the Llama and Dolphin models older reviews mention, to Venice's own Uncensored 1.2, DeepSeek V4, Qwen, GLM and Kimi. Developers get an OpenAI-compatible API, an official command-line tool, an MCP server and an x402 client that pays per request in USDC without an API key.
The free plan allows 10 text and 15 image prompts a day on base models. Pro costs $18 a month for unlimited text, 1,000 images a day and the secure modes; Pro Plus, marked most popular, $68 with 7,500 credits; and Max $200 with 22,500, where 100 credits equal $1 and unused credits can be banked for two or three months. "Uncensored" output makes it a poor fit for compliance-minded teams.
Compiled by RECATOOLS from public sources: vendor documentation and pricing, code repositories and published reporting.
About this listing
This entry was compiled from publicly available data including Venice AI's official website, press releases, documentation, and reputable third-party publications. RECATOOLS is not affiliated with Venice AI unless explicitly stated.
Third-party AI tools update their pricing, features, availability, and policies frequently. Information here may be outdated by the time you read this — we make reasonable efforts to keep listings current, but cannot guarantee absolute accuracy.
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