Kvasir

Kvasir combines a legal research workspace with REST and MCP access to German, Austrian, Swiss, and EU law. It is aimed at practitioners who need primary-source retrieval and citation validation, plus developers embedding those checks in AI tools. The free Hobby tier is the sensible starting point; teams needing case interpretation or a generally available paid tier should look elsewhere.

Overview

Kvasir’s corpus covers nine jurisdictions and reports more than 450,000 norms alongside more than 450,000 court decisions, with daily updates. That scale and refresh schedule suit work where current statutes, regulations, and judgments matter. Authority search and source citations support evidence-led research, but the product does not provide case analysis, so it is better at finding and validating material than explaining a judgment in depth.

The web app serves direct research, while the REST and MCP interfaces let software call the same legal grounding functions. The provider, kvasir.legal GbR, is based in Bremen, Germany.

Key features

• Search and citation relationships: Legal search, legal objects, citation resolution, and citation relations help users locate authorities and follow links between references. Batch verification is particularly useful for checking a collection of citations rather than reviewing them one by one.
• Quotation validation: Draft checking compares proposed quotations with canonical legal wording. It can catch wording that has drifted from the source, but submitting a full draft requires the separately granted legal.check scope, an important permission boundary for firms handling sensitive material.
• AI and developer access: The documented MCP endpoint works with ChatGPT, Claude, Microsoft 365 Copilot, Perplexity, and Mistral Le Chat. Setup guidance also covers Claude Code, Claude Desktop, Cursor, and VS Code, while plain REST access accommodates other integrations.
• Privacy and hosting: Request content is processed in memory rather than stored, while aggregate usage counters remain retained. Corpus data, account records, and counters are hosted in Railway’s EU region. Kvasir says it lacks SOC 2 Type II and ISO 27001 certification; a CAIQ-Lite questionnaire is available on request.
• Support: The Impressum says email or LinkedIn queries generally receive a response on working days within one hour, a useful expectation for professional users.

Pricing

Hobby — €0.00 per month, free forever: This plan includes the full app, an API key, MCP access, and 2,000 sips per month. It is a strong fit for individual lawyers, evaluators, and developers prototyping a workflow, although the sip allowance limits sustained or automated use.

Pro — €12.00 per month: The announced tier raises the allowance to 5,000 sips monthly, bills overflow per sip, and enables a spend limit by default. It is not yet available, so buyers cannot currently rely on it for production capacity or renewal terms beyond the stated monthly billing.

Enterprise — custom pricing: Negotiated firm-wide volume comes with a DPA, invoicing, agreed terms, and prioritized requests for coverage and endpoints. This is the route for organizations that need contractual arrangements and influence over expansion, not a transparent self-serve purchase.

Unauthenticated testing is deliberately small: the keyless sandbox permits 20 requests daily, while the MCP demo allows 10 tool calls daily and is IP-limited. Default API keys allow 120 requests per minute and 50,000 per month, which may matter more than the Hobby sip allowance for high-volume integrations.

Platforms

Kvasir runs on the web and exposes both API and MCP interfaces. That combination suits browser-based research and teams embedding legal retrieval into assistants, editors, or internal applications.

Who it's for

Choose Kvasir if your work depends on German, Austrian, Swiss, or EU primary sources and you need citations checked programmatically or in AI-assisted drafting. It is less suitable for readers whose priority is substantive case analysis, a mature paid plan, or formal SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 assurance.

Pros and cons

• Pros: Broad, daily-refreshed corpus; citation existence and quotation checks; web, REST, and MCP access; EU-region hosting and in-memory request processing; capable free plan.
• Cons: No case-analysis function; draft checking needs an additional scope; small free sandbox and monthly Hobby allowance; Pro is not yet available; no SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 certification.

Alternatives

For a wider directory of tools, see AI Legal Research Software.

• OpenJuris is a web freemium option whose free tier provides access to the latest state-of-the-art AI models.
• CaseRead suits users wanting a free API and web tier with daily research and citation-check quotas, document analysis, projects, storage, and one user.
• Clauselex is a web alternative with a free allowance for quick and deep research, drafts, uploads, and one matter.
• Curia is worth considering for credit-based cited case research and document analysis, including a free five-credit tier.
• LawGlance is the option to examine when self-hosting and a public GitHub-developed assistant are priorities.
• Legalcode offers API and web access, a free daily and monthly request allowance, and sources across 40 jurisdictions.
• Align Research is a web freemium choice for users whose needs fit three free research jobs per month.
• IURIX is a paid product with a free trial phase for selected professional users.

Verdict

Kvasir is a convincing choice for lawyers and developers who need current primary-law retrieval plus citation and quotation verification in German-speaking and EU contexts. Its free plan and integration breadth lower the barrier to building a grounded workflow. Look elsewhere if you need case analysis, a currently purchasable paid tier, or audited SOC 2 Type II or ISO 27001 credentials.