Mistral Small vs Mixtral 8×22B
A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.
Updated
Mistral Small specs · Mixtral 8×22B specs- PriceMistral Small
Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Mixtral 8×22B does not.
- Context windowMistral Small
Mistral Small accepts 128K tokens vs 64K, 2.0× 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 Mistral Small edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Mixtral 8×22B's 0. Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Mixtral 8×22B does not. Mistral Small accepts 128K tokens vs 64K, 2.0× 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.
Mistral Small is the newer of the two, released 5 months after Mixtral 8×22B, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Small is usually picked for cheapest llm and fastest llm workloads, while Mixtral 8×22B sees more deployments in open source llm and commercial use llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Mistral Small | Mixtral 8×22B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral | Mistral |
| Released | Sep 2024 | Apr 2024 |
| Modalities | text | text |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 64K tokens |
| Max output | , | , |
| Input · 1M | $0.20 / 1M tokens | Pricing not published |
| Output · 1M | $0.60 / 1M tokens | Pricing not published |
| Knowledge cutoff | , | , |
| Open weights | Yes (Apache-2.0) | Yes (Apache-2.0) |
| 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$1.50 vs ,
- Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$15.00 vs ,
- RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$33.60 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).
Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.
- Mistral Small$0.050
- Mixtral 8×22BPricing unavailable
Benchmarks compared
Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.
- MMLU,77.8
Mistral Small fits when…
- Apache-2.0 open-weight
- Fast and cheap
- Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 64K for Mixtral 8×22B.
Mixtral 8×22B fits when…
- Apache-2.0
- MoE economics
- Mature
Consider Mistral Large 2
Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.
Frequently asked
Is Mistral Small or Mixtral 8×22B 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?
Mistral Small accepts 128K tokens vs 64K for Mixtral 8×22B.Is Mistral Small or Mixtral 8×22B better for coding?
Both Mistral Small and Mixtral 8×22B 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. Mistral Small is licensed under Apache-2.0; Mixtral 8×22B under Apache-2.0.When were Mistral Small and Mixtral 8×22B released?
Mistral Small was released by Mistral on 2024-09-18. Mixtral 8×22B was released by Mistral on 2024-04-10.
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