Frontier-class open models on a free Kaggle TPU v5e-8: GLM-5.3-Flash 320B MoE (~165 tok/s, our own JAX engine) and Qwen3.8-27B bf16 (~130 tok/s), 262k context, prefix caching. Works with Claude Code, Codex, opencode and pi.

kaggle-tpu-lab

Run open models on Kaggle's free TPU v5e-8 and get a public endpoint that speaks the OpenAI and Anthropic APIs. Point Claude Code, Codex CLI, opencode or anything else at it. No GPU, no cloud bill, about twenty minutes from pressing Run to a URL.

Each model has its own folder with a run-all Kaggle notebook, the kernel script behind it, and a write-up of how it works and what we measured.

Model	Weights on the TPU	Context	One stream	Many streams	Prefill	Run → URL	Engine
Qwen3.8-27B	bf16, no quantization	262k	~130 tok/s	~540 tok/s at 8	10,300 tok/s	~22 min	vllm-tpu + one patch	notebook
GLM-5.3-Flash (320B MoE)	3-bit experts, int8 rest	262k	~165 tok/s	~170 tok/s at 3	~1,800 tok/s	6–13 min	our own JAX engine	notebook

Numbers are measured on the shipped configuration; the folder READMEs say how. Qwen runs on vllm-tpu with one patch. GLM-5.3-Flash runs on an engine we wrote in JAX for it; as far as we know it is the first to run that model on a TPU.

What you need

A Kaggle account with TPU access (verify it under Settings: a phone number, and for some accounts an identity check through Persona before TPU sessions are handed out) and its free quota, around 20 TPU hours a week. Nothing to install for the notebook route. For the terminal route, Python 3.9+ and the Kaggle CLI.

How a session works

The notebook attaches public datasets holding the weights (and, where it helps, a pre-built compile cache), builds the engine across the eight chips, opens a Cloudflare tunnel and prints the URL and an API key. The last cell is the server: leave it running. A keepalive holds the session up to Kaggle's limit, a little under nine hours, after which you run it again and get a new URL.

Wire a coding agent with one line, for example Claude Code:

ANTHROPIC_BASE_URL= ANTHROPIC_AUTH_TOKEN= ANTHROPIC_MODEL= claude

Each folder README has the exact lines for Claude Code, Codex CLI and opencode.

From a terminal

git clone https://github.com/ARahim3/kaggle-tpu-lab
cd kaggle-tpu-lab
python launch.py serve            # Qwen3.8-27B today; --model picks another recipe once there is one

launch.py pushes the kernel with the Kaggle CLI and follows its progress; status and stop do what they say.

On a Google Cloud TPU VM

The GLM-5.3-Flash recipe also runs on a rented TPU VM, the same machine as Kaggle's (v5litepod-8) or a v6e-8, with no queue and no nine-hour cap: gcp/ has the guide and the three scripts (environment, datasets, run).

Adding a model

One folder at the top level, named after the model: README.md with the numbers and the how, kernel/ with the serving script, notebook/ with the run-all notebook generated from it, plus whatever the recipe needs (a patch, an engine). The launcher and the notebook share the same config block, so a setting changed in one place means the same thing in the other.

License

The code here is MIT. Model weights keep their own licenses; each folder says which.