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Ministral 8B vs Mistral Small

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

Updated

Ministral 8B specs · Mistral Small specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Small

    Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Ministral 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.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Mistral Small edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Ministral 8B's 0. Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Ministral 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. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Both shipped within roughly a month of each other in 2024, so they share the same generation of training data and tooling. Ministral 8B is usually picked for edge deployment and on device workloads, while Mistral Small sees more deployments in cheapest llm and fastest llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecMinistral 8BMistral Small
ProviderMistralMistral
ReleasedOct 2024Sep 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not published$0.20 / 1M tokens
Output · 1MPricing not published$0.60 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Mistral Research 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 $1.50
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day, vs $15.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day, vs $33.60

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.

  • Ministral 8BPricing unavailable
  • Mistral Small$0.050

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 Ministral 8B if

Ministral 8B fits when…

  • Edge-optimized
  • Strong 8B-class quality
Pick Mistral Small if

Mistral Small fits when…

  • Apache-2.0 open-weight
  • Fast and cheap
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsMinistral 8B vs Mistral Large 2Mistral Small vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Ministral 8B or Mistral Small 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 Ministral 8B and Mistral Small ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is Ministral 8B or Mistral Small better for coding?
    Both Ministral 8B and Mistral Small 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. Ministral 8B is licensed under Mistral Research License; Mistral Small under Apache-2.0.
  • When were Ministral 8B and Mistral Small released?
    Ministral 8B was released by Mistral on 2024-10-16. Mistral Small was released by Mistral on 2024-09-18.
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