Mistral is a European AI company with its own family of models. Its API has a Free mode that is on by default and does not ask for a credit card, so you can try it without any commitment.
Create the key
- Sign in to the Mistral Studio console. Create an account if you do not have one.
- Open API Keys in the left sidebar.
- Click Create new key.
- Give the key a name and, if you like, an expiration date. Mistral recommends rotating keys regularly. You are also asked for a Connector access scope; LuciQA does not use connectors, so either choice works.
- Click Create new key again to confirm.
- Copy the key immediately. The full key is shown only once; after you close the dialog it cannot be displayed again.
What Free mode covers
Free mode comes with usage and rate limits, and Mistral does not publish one number for every account. Your limits (requests per second, tokens per minute and tokens per month) are listed in the Admin Panel under API → Limits (admin.mistral.ai/plateforme/limits). Which models Free mode can reach also depends on the account.
In practice this means: check the Limits page once after creating the key, and again if requests start failing with a rate-limit error.
Which model to pick
- Mistral Small for quick, everyday questions.
- Mistral Medium for a balance of speed and reasoning.
- Mistral Large when a question needs the most careful answer.
- Ministral 3 14B, a small model that also reads images well.
These names use Mistral’s -latest aliases (for example mistral-large-latest), so they keep pointing at the current version of each model.
Keep the key safe
Store the key in a password manager. Do not paste it into screenshots, chats or public code, and set an expiration date if you are only experimenting.
Using the key in LuciQA
LuciQA is a desktop app that answers questions about what is on your screen. Open Settings, pick Mistral, paste the key, choose a model and save. LuciQA treats all four models as image-capable, so text and image questions both go to the model you chose. Mistral documents image input most clearly for Ministral 3 14B; if an image answer looks off with another model, try that one.
Mistral pairs well with a second provider for comparison. The free AI APIs comparison lists the others that cost nothing to start with.