Cohere trial API key
Cohere Free API tier
The catch: Only 1,000 calls a month across all endpoints, and trial keys may not be used for production or commercial work.
| Access | Free API tier |
|---|---|
| Free limits | Trial keys are limited to 1,000 API calls a month. Per-endpoint trial rate limits: Chat 20 requests/min on each Command model (Command A+, A, A Reasoning, A Translate, A Vision, R+, R, R7B, North Mini Code); Embed 2,000 inputs/min; Embed (images) 5 inputs/min; EmbedJob 5 requests/min; Rerank 10 requests/min; Tokenize 100 requests/min; Audio Transcriptions 5 requests/min; Parse 500 requests/min; everything else 500 requests/min. |
| Modality | text, image, embeddings, audio |
| Credit card | – |
| Commercial use | Not allowed |
| Trains on your data | Yes, on the free tier |
| Licence or terms | Cohere Terms of Use |
| Context window | 128,000 tokens |
| Model id | command-a-plus-05-2026 |
| Base URL | https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1 |
| Last checked | 2 Oct 2026 |
How to use Command A+ and family
It speaks the OpenAI API at https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1, so the OpenAI SDK you already use works once you change the base URL and key.
Quickstart
curl https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1/chat/completions -H "Authorization: Bearer $KEY" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d '{"model":"command-a-plus-05-2026","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"Hello"}]}'Paste into Claude Code
I want to use the free AI model "Command A+ and family" from Cohere (model id: command-a-plus-05-2026) in my project. Please: 1. Check the provider docs and give me the exact steps to get a free API key. 2. Give me a minimal working example that reads the key from an environment variable. 3. Tell me the real free limits and any catch (commercial use, card, data use). Listed limits: 1,000 calls a month, 20 RPM on chat. 4. If the same provider has a more generous free option, mention it.
Before you ship on it
- Only 1,000 calls a month across all endpoints, and trial keys may not be used for production or commercial work.
- Prompts on the free tier may be used to train models. Keep customer data off it.
- Non-commercial: cohere.com/pricing says trial keys are rate limited and not permitted for production or commercial purposes. You need a paid production key for that (docs.cohere.com/docs/going-live).
- Free tiers are shared capacity: treat the limits as a ceiling, not a promise, and keep a paid fallback.
Questions
Is Cohere trial API key free?
Yes. Cohere offers it as free api tier, with these limits: 1,000 calls a month, 20 RPM on chat.
Can I use Cohere trial API key commercially?
No: the free access is for testing or non-commercial use. A paid plan is needed for production.
How do I start with Cohere trial API key?
It speaks the OpenAI API at https://api.cohere.ai/compatibility/v1, so the OpenAI SDK you already use works once you change the base URL and key.
Source: docs.cohere.com/docs/rate-limits, checked 2 Oct 2026.