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Aya Expanse 8B vs Pixtral 12B

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Aya Expanse 8B specs · Pixtral 12B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.

  • Context windowPixtral 12B

    Pixtral 12B accepts 128K tokens vs 8.2K, 15.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesPixtral 12B

    Pixtral 12B supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Aya Expanse 8B.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Pixtral 12B edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Aya Expanse 8B's 0. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Pixtral 12B accepts 128K tokens vs 8.2K, 15.6× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, Aya Expanse 8B handles text while Pixtral 12B handles text, vision, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Aya Expanse 8B is the newer of the two, released 1 months after Pixtral 12B, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Aya Expanse 8B is usually picked for multilingual and translation workloads, while Pixtral 12B sees more deployments in vision and edge deployment. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecAya Expanse 8BPixtral 12B
ProviderCohereMistral
ReleasedOct 2024Sep 2024
Modalitiestexttext, vision
Context window8.2K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Output · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (CC-BY-NC 4.0)Yes (Apache-2.0)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day, vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs ,

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Aya Expanse 8BPricing unavailable
  • Pixtral 12BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Aya Expanse 8B if

Aya Expanse 8B fits when…

  • Multilingual at small size
  • Strong cross-lingual transfer
  • Efficient on commodity GPUs
Pick Pixtral 12B if

Pixtral 12B fits when…

  • Apache-2.0
  • Vision in 12B size
  • Single-GPU
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 8.2K for Aya Expanse 8B.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision.
Don't want either?

Consider Command R+ (08-2024)

Cohere's flagship optimized for RAG and tool use in enterprise settings.

See Command R+ (08-2024) specsAya Expanse 8B vs Command R+ (08-2024)Pixtral 12B vs Command R+ (08-2024)

Frequently asked

  • Is Aya Expanse 8B or Pixtral 12B cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Pixtral 12B accepts 128K tokens vs 8.2K for Aya Expanse 8B.
  • Is Aya Expanse 8B or Pixtral 12B better for coding?
    Both Aya Expanse 8B and Pixtral 12B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Both ship with open weights. Aya Expanse 8B is licensed under CC-BY-NC 4.0; Pixtral 12B under Apache-2.0.
  • When were Aya Expanse 8B and Pixtral 12B released?
    Aya Expanse 8B was released by Cohere on 2024-10-23. Pixtral 12B was released by Mistral on 2024-09-17.
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