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Llama 4 70B 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

Llama 4 70B specs · Pixtral 12B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.

  • Context windowTie

    Both ship a 128K-token context window.

  • BenchmarksTie

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

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text, vision.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Llama 4 70B and Pixtral 12B: 0 category wins each, with the rest tied. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

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, vision), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Llama 4 70B is the newer of the two, released 7 months after Pixtral 12B, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Llama 4 70B is usually picked for open source llm and edge deployment 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

SpecLlama 4 70BPixtral 12B
ProviderMetaMistral
ReleasedApr 2025Sep 2024
Modalitiestext, visiontext, vision
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Output · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Llama 4 Community License)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.

  • Llama 4 70BPricing 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 Llama 4 70B if

Llama 4 70B fits when…

  • Self-hostable on commodity hardware
  • Strong all-rounder
  • Mature tooling (vLLM, SGLang)
Pick Pixtral 12B if

Pixtral 12B fits when…

  • Apache-2.0
  • Vision in 12B size
  • Single-GPU
Don't want either?

Consider Llama 4 405B

Meta's flagship open-weight model, sparse MoE design competitive with closed-frontier flagships.

See Llama 4 405B specsLlama 4 70B vs Llama 4 405BPixtral 12B vs Llama 4 405B

Frequently asked

  • Is Llama 4 70B 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?
    Both Llama 4 70B and Pixtral 12B ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is Llama 4 70B or Pixtral 12B better for coding?
    Both Llama 4 70B 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. Llama 4 70B is licensed under Llama 4 Community License; Pixtral 12B under Apache-2.0.
  • When were Llama 4 70B and Pixtral 12B released?
    Llama 4 70B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05. Pixtral 12B was released by Mistral on 2024-09-17.
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