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Cohere — free tier setup
What you get free
A non-expiring trial key covering the Command family (chat, tool calling, vision) plus Embed and Rerank, no credit card. Catalog quota: "Official rate-limits docs: 'Trial keys (and prod keys on newer Chat model variants) are limited to 1,000 API calls a month.' Chat API (all models): 20 req / min. Rerank: 10 req / min. Embed: 2,000 inputs / min. cheahjs README: 'Models share a common monthly quota.'" Category: conditional_free — the condition: the trial key is for non-commercial use only (per the catalog / mnfst data.json; the official rate-limits page describes trial keys only as "free but limited in usage" without restating this). Do not ship a commercial product on a trial key. The other gotcha: 1,000 calls/month is a shared pool across all models — it goes fast.
Friction check
| Credit card | no |
| Phone verification | unknown |
| Org/membership | no |
| Trial key licence | non-commercial use only |
| Est. time to first key | 5m |
| Trains on your prompts | unknown |
The rest of this guide — the key-obtain walkthrough, first request, the limits that will bite you, and the rotation runbook — ships with the Indie field library. What you’ve read above is the real first section, not a blurred preview; the remainder simply isn’t in this page.