Cohere: Command R

Command R is Cohere's conversational model built for long-context, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and tool-use workloads in business settings. The original release is command-r-03-2024, which the command-r alias pointed to. Cohere's models page lists the original as deprecated and shows command-r-08-2024, an August 2024 update, as the live Command R model. Cohere's Command R page now recommends the newer Command A for most use cases.

Status

According to Cohere's deprecations page, command-r (the alias of command-r-03-2024) and command-r-03-2024 were deprecated on September 15, 2025. Cohere recommends command-r-08-2024, command-r-plus-08-2024 or command-a-03-2025 as replacements. No shutdown date is listed for them on that page. Fine-tuned models based on command-r-03-2024 were sunset on March 8, 2025. command-r-08-2024 has no deprecation date listed.

Key Features

• 128K context: both Command R versions list a 128K-token context window and 4K max output tokens.
• Grounded generation with citations: according to the Hugging Face card for the original model, Command R answers from supplied document snippets and can cite them.
• Tool use: single-step and multi-step tool use for agent-style workflows.
• Multilingual: optimized for 10 languages (English, French, Spanish, Italian, German, Brazilian Portuguese, Japanese, Korean, Simplified Chinese, Arabic), with pre-training data covering 13 more.
• Size and license of the open weights: the original c4ai-command-r-v01 weights are 35B parameters under CC-BY-NC 4.0 with Cohere's acceptable use policy, which excludes commercial use of the weights.
• August 2024 update: Cohere says command-r-08-2024 has about 50% higher throughput and 20% lower latency than the prior version, and needs half the hardware to serve.

Use Cases

• RAG assistants that cite internal documents.
• Tool-calling agents that need a smaller, cheaper model than Command R+.
• Multilingual question answering across the 10 optimized languages.

Pricing

This page does not list prices because they were not verified from Cohere's pricing page on the date checked. See Cohere's own pricing page before budgeting.

Getting Started

1. Call the Chat endpoint with model set to command-r-08-2024.
2. Do not use the command-r alias for new work: it points to the deprecated command-r-03-2024.
3. For new projects, evaluate Cohere Command A, which Cohere recommends for most use cases.

Frequently Asked Questions

Is Command R still available?

command-r-08-2024 is listed as live. The command-r alias and command-r-03-2024 were deprecated on September 15, 2025.

What replaced Command R?

Cohere's deprecations page recommends command-r-08-2024, command-r-plus-08-2024 or command-a-03-2025.

What is Command R's context length?

128K tokens, with a 4K-token maximum output, per Cohere's models page.

Can I download Command R?

The original weights are on Hugging Face under CC-BY-NC 4.0, which is non-commercial.

Alternatives

• Cohere Command A: the model Cohere recommends for most new use cases.
• Cohere Command A+: a newer Cohere flagship in this catalog.
• Cohere Rerank 3.5: Cohere's reranker, often paired with Command models in RAG.

Conclusion

Command R is a 128K-context model for grounded generation and tool use. Use command-r-08-2024 if you must stay on Command R, check the deprecations page first, and consider Command A for new builds.