Mistral Small vs o4
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 · o4 specs- PriceMistral Small
Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while o4 does not.
- Context windowo4
o4 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.
- Modalitieso4
o4 supports 2 modalities (text, vision) vs 1 for Mistral Small.
- OpennessMistral Small
Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0); o4 is API-only.
It's a genuine coin-flip between Mistral Small and o4: 2 category wins each, with the rest tied. Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while o4 does not. o4 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. They differ in modality coverage, Mistral Small handles text while o4 handles text, vision, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Mistral Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0); o4 is API-only.
o4 is the newer of the two, released 15 months after Mistral Small, 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 o4 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 Small | o4 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral | OpenAI |
| Released | Sep 2024 | Dec 2025 |
| Modalities | text | text, vision |
| Context window | 128K tokens | 200K 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) | 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$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
- o4Pricing unavailable
Benchmarks compared
Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.
Mistral Small fits when…
- Apache-2.0 open-weight
- Fast and cheap
- Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (Apache-2.0).
o4 fits when…
- Exceptional performance on hard math and reasoning benchmarks
- Good at multi-step planning and verification
- Strong scientific reasoning
- Long-context tasks, handles 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Small.
- Multimodal needs covering vision.
Consider Mistral Large 2
Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.
Frequently asked
Is Mistral Small or o4 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?
o4 accepts 200K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Small.Is Mistral Small or o4 better for coding?
Both Mistral Small and o4 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 Small ships open weights (Apache-2.0). o4 is API-only.When were Mistral Small and o4 released?
Mistral Small was released by Mistral on 2024-09-18. o4 was released by OpenAI on 2025-12-15.
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