A bstract The production cross sections for prompt open-charm mesons in proton-proton collisions at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV are reported. The measurement is performed using a data sample collected by the CMS experiment corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 29 nb − 1 . The differential production cross sections of the D ∗ ± , D ± , and D 0 $$ \left({\overline{\mathrm{D}}}^0\right) $$ <mml:math xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML"><mml:mfenced><mml:msup><mml:mover><mml:mi>D</mml:mi><mml:mo>¯</mml:mo></mml:mover><mml:mn>0</mml:mn></mml:msup></mml:mfenced></mml:math> mesons are presented in ranges of transverse momentum and pseudorapidity 4 &lt; p T &lt; 100 GeV and |η| &lt; 2 . 1, respectively. The results are compared to several theoretical calculations and to previous measurements.