ModelRefs / Mistral Small 3.1 vs Mistral Large 2
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Mistral Large 2
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Mistral Large 2: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
Mistral Large 2: Mistral Large 2 is Mistral AI's 2024 flagship commercial model with a 128,000-token context window, built for instruction following, multilingual tasks and function calling in agentic workflows. Both releases are now retired on Mistral's own API: mistral-large-2407 on 30 March 2025, replaced by Mistral Large 3, and mistral-large-2411 on 31 May 2026, replaced by Mistral Medium 3.5.
Mistral Small 3.1: Mistral Small 3.1 is Mistral AI's 24-billion-parameter multimodal model, accepting text and image input across a context window of up to 128,000 tokens and published under Apache 2.0. Mistral reports inference speeds of 150 tokens per second and compares it with Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini in the same weight class. Its size and licence make it one of the larger models that remains practical to self-host on a single machine.
Context window: Mistral Large 2 accepts up to 128,000 tokens, Mistral Small 3.1 up to 128,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
Mistral Large 2 vs Mistral Small 3.1 at a glance
| Attribute | Mistral Large 2 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Released | 2024-11-01 | 2025-03-17 |
| Context window | 128,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input price | $2/M tokens | $0.1/M tokens |
| Output price | $6/M tokens | $0.3/M tokens |
| Licence | Mistral Commercial | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: Mistral Large 2 56%, Mistral Small 3.1 95%. Mistral Small 3.1 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: Mistral Large 2 86%, Mistral Small 3.1 63%. Mistral Large 2 leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to Mistral Small 3.1 vs Mistral Large 2.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, Mistral Small 3.1 or Mistral Large 2?
Mistral Small 3.1 and Mistral Large 2 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is Mistral Small 3.1 cheaper than Mistral Large 2?
Compare $0.00010 vs $0.00200 on this page.