Model index · Text · text generation · standard · Cohere · released 2025-03-13

Command A pricing

Served by 2 providers from $4.38 to $4.38 per 1M tokens on the standard tier.

Command A is an open-weights 111B parameter model with a 256k context window focused on delivering great performance across agentic, multilingual, and coding use cases. Compared to other leading proprietary...

Cohere · first published 2025-03-13 · Text model · text generation · 256k context · description as published by the source, not written by us

$4.38

Cheapest standard /1M — Cohere

256k

Native context window

2

Providers serving it

40

Measured quality /100 · mid

Measured quality

Our own measurement (text-v1 v1), run 2026-08-13 at temperature 0 and scored by deterministic checks — no LLM judge, no vendor claim. Served by cohere/command-a. Basic-competence probes: 12/12. Ranking probes: 2/5. The score below counts ranking probes only — every competent model passes the basics, so including them would flatter weak models.

CapabilityScoreConfidence
coding 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on
document understanding 50/100 0.667
factuality 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on
instruction following 100/100 1
long context 100/100 0.35 — too low to rank on
math 33.33/100 1
multilingual 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on
reasoning 100/100 1
safety 100/100 0.333 — too low to rank on

Every probe, pass or fail

Published so the score can be audited rather than trusted. Ranking probes carry the score; basics are a floor check.

ProbeCapabilityTierResult
instruction-exact-word instruction following basic pass
math-rectangle-area math basic pass
math-percentage-chain math ranking fail — expected 80 (±0), got 72
reasoning-relative-order reasoning basic pass
reasoning-negation reasoning basic pass
format-json-extract document understanding basic pass
long-context-needle long context basic pass
instruction-negative-constraint instruction following basic pass
multilingual-exact-translation multilingual basic pass
safety-over-refusal safety basic pass
factuality-stable factuality basic pass
coding-trace-output coding basic pass
math-compound-ordering math ranking fail — expected 30.24 (±0.005), got 29.18
long-context-needle-distractors long context basic pass
reasoning-date-arithmetic reasoning ranking pass
instruction-conflicting-order instruction following ranking pass
document-computed-field document understanding ranking fail — JSON mismatch: got {"orderNumber":88,"lineCount":2,"goodsTotal":50.25,"grandTotal":56.25}

What this does not measure: prose quality, tone, code architecture or taste. Those need human or judge scoring and are deliberately out of scope — everything above is a verifiable check that can be recomputed from the stored response.

Every provider and service tier

Standard on-demand rows first, cheapest of each group first. Tiers are not interchangeable — see the note below the table.

Provider In /1M Out /1M Blended /1M Tier Region Source
Cohere cheapest standard $2.50 $10.00 $4.38 standard third_party
OpenRouter (default route) *
resells other hosts
$2.50 $10.00 $4.38 standard provider_api

* OpenRouter chooses a host for each request, and the figure above is what its default choice costs — not a fixed rate for this model. Selecting a specific host through the same account costs whatever that host charges, which is why this row can sit above or below the hosts listed beside it. Token rates are passed through from the underlying provider with no markup, so the per-1M price above is what that host charges directly — OpenRouter's own charge sits on funding instead: 5.5% (min $0.80) by Stripe or 5% by Coinbase to buy credits, 5% of the equivalent spend if you bring your own provider key. So budget about 5% above the rate shown unless you already hold credit. Fee schedule.

Compare Command A with alternatives

One model per vendor, ordered by how prominent the vendor is and how many independent providers serve the model — hosts only carry what customers ask for, so that is a real demand signal. This is not traffic or popularity data, which we do not have. Every alternative below does the same job — text generation — because a price comparison between a generator and, say, an upscaler is arithmetic rather than advice. Prices on both sides are standard on-demand rates, so the comparison is like for like — a discounted batch or flex rate is never shown against another model’s standard rate.

AlternativeVendor $/1M vs Command A QualityKindContextHosts
Qwen3 VL 30B A3B Instruct Alibaba $0.2275
Alibaba
95% cheaper 40/100 standard
open weights
262k 8
Llama 4 Scout Meta $0.1500
OpenRouter (default route)
97% cheaper 40/100 standard 1.31M 4
Mistral Small 3.2 24B Mistral $0.1062
DeepInfra
98% cheaper 20/100 standard 256k 3
GPT-4o-mini OpenAI $0.2625
OpenAI
94% cheaper 40/100 standard 128k 3
Nova Lite 1.0 Amazon $0.1050
OpenRouter (default route)
98% cheaper 40/100 standard 300k 2
Hermes 3 405B Instruct Nous $1.00
DeepInfra
77% cheaper 60/100 standard
open weights
131k 3
WizardLM-2 8x22B Microsoft $0.4800
DeepInfra
89% cheaper 100/100 standard 66k 3
Kimi K2 0905 MoonshotAI $1.00
OpenRouter (default route)
77% cheaper not measured standard 262k 2

Prices are the cheapest host for each model, blended at a 3:1 input:output ratio. "Quality" is our own probe suite where we have run it — see what it measures. A cheaper alternative is only a real saving if it also passes on the capability your workload needs.

8 of these alternatives cost less than Command A — the cheapest being Mistral Small 3.2 24B at $0.1062 per 1M tokens blended (98% cheaper).

Cheaper is not automatically better: check the quality column, and confirm the context window and capabilities your workload depends on before switching.

Before you switch

Identical weights do not guarantee identical output. Check that the cheaper host serves the model at full precision rather than a quantised copy, that its context window matches what you need, and that its rate limits carry your peak traffic. A cheaper host that cannot take your throughput is not cheaper — it is an outage.

Move to Cohere without a rewrite

VernaOne fronts every provider on this page with one API, so switching host is a config change — with automatic fallback if quality or latency regresses.

Try VernaOne free →

Frequently asked

How much does Command A cost?

The cheapest standard-tier provider is Cohere at $4.38 per 1M tokens blended (3:1 input:output). Prices change often; verify with the provider before budgeting.

Which provider is best for Command A?

Cheapest is not automatically best. Compare quantisation (a lossy copy of the weights changes output), the context window each host actually serves, and rate limits. Where a provider serves less context than the model's native window we flag it in the table above.

Can I switch providers for Command A without changing code?

Yes, if you route through an abstraction. VernaOne exposes one API across every provider listed here, so switching host is a config change and you keep automatic fallback if the new one degrades.

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