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Mistral Large vs Phi-4: Pricing, Benchmarks & Verdict (2026)

Verdict

Phi-4 is significantly cheaper at $0.07/$0.14 per million tokens vs $2.00/$6.00. Mistral Large is stronger for coding with a coding ELO of 1240 vs 1130. Phi-4 is faster at 160 tokens/sec vs 75 tokens/sec. Mistral Large ranks higher overall with an Arena ELO of 1245 vs 1150. Mistral Large offers a larger 128K context window vs 16K.

Side-by-Side Comparison

FeatureMistral LargePhi-4
ProviderMistralMicrosoft
Input Price / 1M tokens$0.500$0.065
Output Price / 1M tokens$1.50$0.140
Context Window128K16.384K
Max Output Tokens8,1924,096
Arena ELO1,2451,150
Coding ELO1,2401,130
TTFT (ms)280100
Tokens/sec75160
MultimodalNoNo
JSON ModeYesYes
Function CallingYesNo
VisionNoNo
When to Use Mistral Large

Choose Mistral Large when you need: strong multilingual support, good coding capabilities, european ai alternative, open-weight model available. It excels at coding, multilingual, general-purpose tasks. Its 128K context window is larger, making it better for long-document processing.

Strengths:

  • Strong multilingual support
  • Good coding capabilities
  • European AI alternative
  • Open-weight model available

Best for:

codingmultilingualgeneral-purpose
When to Use Phi-4

Choose Phi-4 when you need: ultra-low cost for a capable model, strong math for its size (14b params), very fast inference, can run on consumer hardware. It excels at cost-sensitive, edge-deployment, math, lightweight-tasks tasks. It is also the more cost-effective option between the two.

Strengths:

  • Ultra-low cost for a capable model
  • Strong math for its size (14B params)
  • Very fast inference
  • Can run on consumer hardware

Best for:

cost-sensitiveedge-deploymentmathlightweight-tasks

Frequently Asked Questions

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