What's free
Trial (evaluation) API keys covering chat, embed and rerank
- Credit card
- not required
- Phone verification
- not required
- Commercial use
- evaluation only
Free limits
| requests per minute | 20 |
|---|---|
| requests per month | 1,000 |
trial key, chat endpoint; 1,000 API calls per month in total. Source: the provider's page, read 2026-10-08.
In the provider's words
1,000 API calls/month total; 20 req/min chat; 2,000 inputs/min embed; 10 req/min rerank
The catch
Explicitly for evaluation only — Cohere's terms prohibit production/commercial use on a trial key
Free models · sample
command-a-03-2025command-r-plus-08-2024command-r-08-2024command-r7b-12-2024embed-v4.0rerank-v3.5A sample of models reachable on the free tier — the live catalog changes. Pull the current set with GET https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1/models.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="command-a-03-2025",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"command-a-03-2025","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'Appears in
Free LLM APIs with no credit cardFree LLM APIs with no phone verificationOpenAI-compatible free LLM APIsFree multimodal LLM APIsNo credit cardOpenAI-compatibleNo card, no phoneEmbeddings / RAG
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Change history
How this free tier has changed since we started tracking it (2026-07-30) — generated from the git history of providers.json.
- 2026-07-30 Updated OpenAI compatibility
- 2026-07-30 Added to the hub