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Llama 4 8B 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

Llama 4 8B specs · Mistral Medium specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Medium

    Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not.

  • 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.

  • OpennessLlama 4 8B

    Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); Mistral Medium is API-only.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Llama 4 8B and Mistral Medium: 1 category wins each, with the rest tied. Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while Llama 4 8B does not. 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), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License); Mistral Medium is API-only.

Llama 4 8B is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Mistral Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Llama 4 8B is usually picked for local llm and on device 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

SpecLlama 4 8BMistral Medium
ProviderMetaMistral
ReleasedApr 2025Dec 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$0.40 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$2.00 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Llama 4 Community 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.

  • Llama 4 8BPricing 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.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Llama 4 8B if

Llama 4 8B fits when…

  • Runs on consumer laptops
  • Broad tooling support
  • Apache-2-adjacent permissiveness for most uses
  • Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Llama 4 Community License).
Pick Mistral Medium if

Mistral Medium fits when…

  • Mid-tier balance
  • EU-friendly
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 8B vs Llama 4 405BMistral Medium vs Llama 4 405B

Frequently asked

  • Is Llama 4 8B 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?
    Both Llama 4 8B and Mistral Medium ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is Llama 4 8B or Mistral Medium better for coding?
    Both Llama 4 8B 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?
    Llama 4 8B ships open weights (Llama 4 Community License). Mistral Medium is API-only.
  • When were Llama 4 8B and Mistral Medium released?
    Llama 4 8B was released by Meta on 2025-04-05. Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18.
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