Cohere
Enterprise-grade NLP APIs for text generation, embeddings, and reranking — purpose-built for RAG pipelines and search applications with Command R+ and Embed v3.
Use Cases
Free Tier
1,000 API calls/month, 20 RPM, no credit card required
How to Maximize the Free Tier
The 1,000 monthly calls are shared across all endpoints (Chat, Embed, Rerank), so budget carefully — a RAG query (embed + rerank + generate) costs 3 calls, leaving only ~333 full queries per month. Use the trial key to prototype your complete pipeline before committing. Command R at $0.15/$0.60 per 1M tokens is 95% cheaper than Command R+ and sufficient for most retrieval-augmented tasks. Embed v3 generates high-quality vectors for semantic search without needing a separate embedding provider. Rate limits are 20 RPM on trial keys — schedule embedding jobs during off-peak hours.
Getting Started
Sign up at cohere.com → create a Trial API key (no credit card) → pip install cohere → set CO_API_KEY environment variable → call embed() for vectors, rerank() to score results, and chat() to generate answers → monitor usage on the dashboard.
Pros
- RAG-native: Embed + Rerank + Command are designed to work together — no need to mix providers for a complete search pipeline
- Multilingual: Embed v3 supports 100+ languages with strong cross-lingual retrieval — ideal for non-English RAG systems
- Full model access: Trial key gives full access to all models including Command R+ — no artificial model restrictions during evaluation
Cons
- Monthly call cap: 1,000 calls/month shared across all endpoints is restrictive for anything beyond prototyping
- Non-commercial trial: Trial keys are explicitly not permitted for production or commercial use — you must upgrade to ship
- Text only: Cohere has no vision, image generation, or audio capabilities