Mistral Large 2 vs o3-mini
A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.
Updated
Mistral Large 2 specs · o3-mini specs- Priceo3-mini
o3-mini is roughly 1.4× cheaper on output tokens ($4.40 vs $6.00 per 1M).
- Context windowo3-mini
o3-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× 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.
- OpennessMistral Large 2
Mistral Large 2 ships open weights (Mistral Research License); o3-mini is API-only.
On balance o3-mini edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Mistral Large 2's 1. o3-mini is roughly 1.4× cheaper on output tokens ($4.40 vs $6.00 per 1M). o3-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K, 1.6× 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. Mistral Large 2 ships open weights (Mistral Research License); o3-mini is API-only.
o3-mini is the newer of the two, released 6 months after Mistral Large 2, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Large 2 is usually picked for coding llm and multilingual workloads, while o3-mini sees more deployments in reasoning and math. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Mistral Large 2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral | OpenAI |
| Released | Jul 2024 | Jan 2025 |
| Modalities | text | text |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 200K tokens |
| Max output | , | , |
| Input · 1M | $2.00 / 1M tokens | $1.10 / 1M tokens |
| Output · 1M | $6.00 / 1M tokens | $4.40 / 1M tokens |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2024-04 | 2023-10 |
| Open weights | Yes (Mistral Research License) | No |
| API available | Yes | Yes |
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$15.00 vs $9.90
- Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$150 vs $99.00
- RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$336 vs $191
Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: $15.00 vs $9.90 per month, model B comes out ahead. Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: $150 vs $99.00 per month, model B comes out ahead. RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: $336 vs $191 per month, model B comes out ahead.
Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.
- Mistral Large 2$0.500
- o3-mini$0.330
Benchmarks compared
Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.
- MMLU84.0
- HumanEval92.0
- GPQA,79.7
Mistral Large 2 fits when…
- Strong code and math
- EU data residency
- Multilingual
- Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Mistral Research License).
o3-mini fits when…
- Reasoning at mid-tier cost
- Fast for a thinking model
- Cost-sensitive workloads, 1.4× cheaper than Mistral Large 2 on output tokens.
- Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Large 2.
Consider Mistral Medium
Mistral's mid-tier balanced model, production-ready at competitive pricing.
Frequently asked
Is Mistral Large 2 or o3-mini cheaper?
o3-mini is cheaper at $4.40 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $6.00 / 1M tokens for Mistral Large 2.Which has the larger context window?
o3-mini accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Large 2.Is Mistral Large 2 or o3-mini better for coding?
Both Mistral Large 2 and o3-mini 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?
Mistral Large 2 ships open weights (Mistral Research License). o3-mini is API-only.When were Mistral Large 2 and o3-mini released?
Mistral Large 2 was released by Mistral on 2024-07-24. o3-mini was released by OpenAI on 2025-01-31.
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