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Ministral 8B vs Phi-4

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 · Phi-4 specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Neither model publishes per-token API pricing.

  • Context windowMinistral 8B

    Ministral 8B accepts 128K tokens vs 16K, 8.0× 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.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Ministral 8B edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Phi-4's 0. Neither model publishes per-token API pricing. Ministral 8B accepts 128K tokens vs 16K, 8.0× 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. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Phi-4 is the newer of the two, released 2 months after Ministral 8B, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Ministral 8B is usually picked for edge deployment and on device workloads, while Phi-4 sees more deployments in on device 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

SpecMinistral 8BPhi-4
ProviderMistralMicrosoft
ReleasedOct 2024Dec 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens16K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Output · 1MPricing not publishedPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Mistral Research License)Yes (MIT)
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.

  • Ministral 8BPricing unavailable
  • Phi-4Pricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

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

Ministral 8BPhi-4
  • MMLU,84.8
  • HumanEval,82.6
Pick Ministral 8B if

Ministral 8B fits when…

  • Edge-optimized
  • Strong 8B-class quality
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 16K for Phi-4.
Pick Phi-4 if

Phi-4 fits when…

  • Exceptional quality at 14B parameters
  • MIT license, clean commercial use
  • Strong on math
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 2Phi-4 vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Ministral 8B or Phi-4 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?
    Ministral 8B accepts 128K tokens vs 16K for Phi-4.
  • Is Ministral 8B or Phi-4 better for coding?
    Both Ministral 8B and Phi-4 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; Phi-4 under MIT.
  • When were Ministral 8B and Phi-4 released?
    Ministral 8B was released by Mistral on 2024-10-16. Phi-4 was released by Microsoft on 2024-12-12.
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