Does Mistral have a free API tier?

Yes. Mistral's la Plateforme offers a free experiment tier with rate limits for testing and low-volume use, alongside paid pay-as-you-go pricing. It's a genuine free option for European developers who want an alternative to US providers.

How much does the Mistral API cost?

Reference pricing (June 2026): Mistral Large is around $2 input / $6 output per million tokens, Mistral Small around $0.20 / $0.60, and Codestral (code) around $0.30 / $0.90. Output is billed separately and costs more than input.

Mistral API — pricing, free tier & how to get a key

Q: How do I get a Mistral API key?

Sign up at console.mistral.ai (la Plateforme), open the API Keys page, create a new key and copy it. Add billing for the paid tier, or use the free experiment tier within its rate limits.

Mistral AI is the leading European LLM provider, with open-weight roots and a competitive hosted API. It runs Mistral Large (flagship), Mistral Small (cheap, fast) and Codestral (code), offers a real free tier, and is a popular choice for teams that want an EU-based alternative. Here's what it costs and how to get your key.

Mistral API pricing (reference, June 2026)

Model	Input $/1M	Output $/1M	Best for
Mistral Large	$2.00	$6.00	Flagship reasoning, quality
Mistral Small cheapest	$0.20	$0.60	High volume, simple tasks
Codestral	$0.30	$0.90	Code completion & generation

⚠️ Reference prices, June 2026 — Mistral updates pricing regularly. Confirm on mistral.ai/pricing before budgeting. Prices are per 1M tokens; output is billed separately and costs more.

→ Estimate your bill on the AI API cost calculator or model a whole app with the AI app cost estimator.

Is there a free tier?

Yes — Mistral's la Plateforme includes a free experiment tier with rate limits, good for testing and low-volume apps, with no upfront cost. For production volume you switch to pay-as-you-go. It's one of the few capable providers with both a genuine free tier and EU data hosting — see also Google Gemini for another real free quota.

How to get a Mistral API key (step by step)

1. Go to console.mistral.ai (la Plateforme) and create an account.
2. Open the API Keys page and click Create new key; copy it once.
3. Stay on the free experiment tier, or add billing under Workspace → Billing for higher limits.
4. The API is OpenAI-style; most OpenAI SDKs work with the Mistral base URL and key.

Test it with a simple request:

# quick test (replace $MISTRAL_API_KEY)
curl https://api.mistral.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $MISTRAL_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"model":"mistral-small-latest","messages":[{"role":"user","content":"hi"}]}'

Estimate your cost

Use the AI API Cost Calculator to plug in your token counts and request volume — it ranks Mistral against GPT-4o, Claude, Gemini and DeepSeek from cheapest to most expensive for your workload.

Cheaper alternatives

For the lowest cost on simple tasks, Mistral Small already competes with GPT-4o mini and Gemini Flash. If you want even cheaper, DeepSeek-V3 undercuts most providers. For frontier quality, compare Mistral Large with GPT-4o and Claude Sonnet.

FAQ

Does Mistral have a free tier?

Yes — the la Plateforme free experiment tier has rate limits and no upfront cost, suitable for testing and low-volume use.

How much does Mistral Large cost?

Around $2 input / $6 output per 1M tokens (reference, June 2026). Mistral Small is far cheaper at ~$0.20/$0.60.

How do I get a Mistral API key?

Is Mistral good for code?

Yes — Codestral is purpose-built for code completion and generation, at ~$0.30/$0.90 per 1M tokens.

Not affiliated with Mistral AI. Prices are reference estimates — always verify on the official pricing page.