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DBRX vs Mistral Medium

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

Updated

DBRX specs · Mistral Medium specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Medium

    Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while DBRX does not.

  • Context windowMistral Medium

    Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 32K, 4.0× 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.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessDBRX

    DBRX ships open weights (Databricks Open Model License); Mistral Medium is API-only.

On balance Mistral Medium edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against DBRX's 1. Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while DBRX does not. Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 32K, 4.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. DBRX ships open weights (Databricks Open Model License); Mistral Medium is API-only.

Mistral Medium is the newer of the two, released 9 months after DBRX, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. DBRX is usually picked for enterprise llm and sql generation workloads, while Mistral Medium sees more deployments in customer support and chatbots. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecDBRXMistral Medium
ProviderOtherMistral
ReleasedMar 2024Dec 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window32K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$0.40 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$2.00 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Databricks Open Model License)No
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 $4.20
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $42.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $72.00

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.

  • DBRXPricing unavailable
  • Mistral Medium$0.140

Benchmarks compared

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

DBRXMistral Medium
  • MMLU73.7
Pick DBRX if

DBRX fits when…

  • Databricks-native
  • Tuned for enterprise SQL/code
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Databricks Open Model License).
Pick Mistral Medium if

Mistral Medium fits when…

  • Mid-tier balance
  • EU-friendly
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 32K for DBRX.
Don't want either?

Consider Yi-Lightning

01.AI's API-tier Chinese-leaning model, strong on Chinese benchmarks at competitive pricing.

See Yi-Lightning specsDBRX vs Yi-LightningMistral Medium vs Yi-Lightning

Frequently asked

  • Is DBRX or Mistral Medium 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?
    Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 32K for DBRX.
  • Is DBRX or Mistral Medium better for coding?
    Both DBRX and Mistral Medium 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?
    DBRX ships open weights (Databricks Open Model License). Mistral Medium is API-only.
  • When were DBRX and Mistral Medium released?
    DBRX was released by Other on 2024-03-27. Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18.
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