Compliant bistable mechanisms, devices with two distinct stable equilibrium positions, are used in a variety of applications, such as switches, clasps, and valves. Many kinds of compliant bistable mechanisms were proposed and studied during the past decade. Among them, tension-based compliant bistable mechanisms, that incorporate tension pivots as their flexible members, feature in short travel distance and low power consuming. So far, the design of this kind of bistable mechanisms is done using finite element method through trial and error, thus is time-consuming. By treating the tension pivots as fixed-guided segments and their elongation as a spring, we developed a novel three degree-of-freedom (3-DOF) pseudo-rigid-body model (PRBM) for this kind of bistable mechanisms. The principle of virtual work is used to derive the force-deflection relationship of the PRBM model. The comparison between the PRBM results and the experimental results of the force-deflection characteristics shows that the PRBM can predict not only the bistable behavior of the tension-based bistable mechanisms, but also their soft spring-like post-bistable behavior and the spring-like force-deflection characteristics when pulling in the reverse direction from the as-fabricated position, which is called reverse behavior. The 3-DOF PRBM can be used to design and identify tension-based bistable mechanisms. Using the PRBM instead of the trial-and-error method can greatly reduce the development time of this kind of bistable mechanisms.