Mistral Large 4 vs Mistral Small
Comparing Mistral Large 4 and Mistral Small across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Mistral AI · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Mistral Large 4 and Mistral Small trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
On price, Mistral Small is roughly 3.4x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.
Mistral Large 4 also accepts a larger context window (1,000,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Mistral Large 4
- you process long inputs — it offers a 1,000,000 token context window
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Oct 2026
Choose Mistral Small
- cost matters — it's about 3.4x cheaper per token
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
18 reported for Mistral Large 4 · 0 for Mistral Small
Mistral Large 4 and Mistral Smalldon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, Mistral Large 4 ($0.68/1M tokens) is 3.4x more expensive than Mistral Small ($0.20/1M tokens).
For output processing, Mistral Large 4 ($2.09/1M tokens) is 3.5x more expensive than Mistral Small ($0.60/1M tokens).
In conclusion, Mistral Large 4 is more expensive than Mistral Small.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Mistral Large 4 has 1028.0B more parameters than Mistral Small, making it 4672.7% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Mistral Large 4 accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Mistral Small's 32,768 tokens. Only Mistral Small specifies output context (32,768 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Mistral Large 4 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small does not.
Mistral Large 4 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Mistral Large 4
Mistral Small
License
Usage and distribution terms
Mistral Large 4 is licensed under a proprietary license, while Mistral Small uses Mistral Research License.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Proprietary
Closed source
Mistral Research License
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Mistral Large 4 was released on 2026-10-06, while Mistral Small was released on 2024-09-17.
Mistral Large 4 is 25 months newer than Mistral Small.
Oct 6, 2026
2 days ago
2.1yr newerSep 17, 2024
2.1 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Provider Availability
Mistral Large 4 is available from Mistral AI. Mistral Small is available from Mistral AI.
Mistral Large 4
Mistral Small
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Mistral Large 4 and Mistral Small side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Mistral Large 4 vs Mistral Small.