What's free
"Free mode" (default for new accounts): API keys with included monthly usage and the lowest limits, "intended for evaluation and prototyping"
- Credit card
- not required
- Phone verification
- required
- Commercial use
- evaluation only
Free limits
Numeric limits are not recorded in structured form for this provider.
In the provider's words
Not published publicly; per-model requests/second, tokens/minute and tokens/month caps are shown only in-console (Admin Panel > API > Limits)
The catch
No credit card required. In Free mode Mistral may use your inputs and outputs to train its models unless you opt out in the Admin panel. Phone verification at signup was recorded in an earlier check; the current docs do not mention it.
Free models: not listed yet.
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
Compare
Change history
How this free tier has changed since we started tracking it (2026-07-30) — generated from the git history of providers.json.
- 2026-10-08 Updated free tier, rate limits, the catch
- 2026-08-14 Updated the catch, card requirement, OpenAI compatibility
- 2026-07-30 Added to the hub