What's free
"Restrictive" free tier explicitly for "try and explore" — official docs say to upgrade for "actual projects and production use"
Rate limits
Not published publicly; exact caps only visible in-console after login (admin.mistral.ai)
The catch
Phone verification required to activate; no credit card required. Free tier is opt-in for data training.
Quickstart — chat completions
from openai import OpenAI
client = OpenAI(base_url="https://api.mistral.ai/v1", api_key="<YOUR_FREE_API_KEY>")
resp = client.chat.completions.create(
model="<a-free-model>",
messages=[{"role": "user", "content": "Hello!"}],
)
print(resp.choices[0].message.content)…or with curl:
curl https://api.mistral.ai/v1/chat/completions \
-H "Authorization: Bearer $API_KEY" \
-H "Content-Type: application/json" \
-d '{"model":"<a-free-model>","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello!"}]}'Appears in
Change history
How this free tier has changed since we started tracking it (2026-07-30) — generated from the git history of providers.json.
- 2026-08-14 Updated the catch, card requirement, OpenAI compatibility
- 2026-07-30 Added to the hub