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Model comparison

DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Mistral Large 3

DeepSeek against Mistral, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 5, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: High — see receipts below

DeepSeek

DeepSeek V4 Pro

Frontier · Open weights

vs

Mistral

Mistral Large 3

Frontier · Open weights

AI model capability comparison
SpecificationDeepSeek V4 ProMistral Large 3
ProviderDeepSeekMistral
TierFrontierFrontier
Context windowWinner: 1M262K
Max outputWinner: 384K262K
Input / 1M tokens$1.32Winner: $0.50
Output / 1M tokens$3.96Winner: $1.50
WeightsOpenOpen
Parameters1.6T total / 49B active (MoE)675B total / 41B active (sparse MoE)
Reasoning levelslow, high, maxNot verifiedUnverified
Modalitiestexttext, image
LicenseMITApache 2.0
API model iddeepseek-v4-promistral-large-3
ReleasedApril 24, 2026December 1, 2025
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14)Winner: 5346
SWE-bench Verified (2026-04-24)80.6Not verifiedUnverified
GPQA Diamond (2026-04-24)Winner: 90.143.9
Humanity's Last Exam (2026-04-24)48.2Not verifiedUnverified
MMLU-Pro (2026-04-24)87.5Not verifiedUnverified

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

  • 2026-08-14: Artificial AnalysisComposite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score. Comparability: directly comparable — AA occasionally rebaselines the index scale between snapshots — a score captured on one date is only comparable to same-snapshot scores (check measuredAt).
  • 2026-04-24: DeepSeek V4 Pro HF model card (vendor, Think Max, exact match)Real GitHub issue resolution: does the model's patch pass the hidden tests. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Post-audit vendor claims and pre-audit scores sit on different task trust levels; scaffolding (agent harness, compute budget) also dominates results. Never aggregate across scaffolds.
  • 2025-12-02: Mistral — Introducing Mistral 3 (vendor, base model, 5-shot no CoT); independent review concursGraduate-level science reasoning: multiple-choice questions written by domain PhDs. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Small question pool: differences under ~2 points are within run-to-run noise. Chain-of-thought vs direct answering must match to compare.

Pricing tiers: DeepSeek V4 Pro: Official peak rates $1.32/$3.96 per MTok; off-peak $0.66/$1.98 (cache-miss). Open weights (MIT). 1.6T/49B active MoE. · Mistral Large 3: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05/MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0), EU-hosted.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked September 3, 2026

DeepSeek V4 Pro

DeepSeek V4 Pro is the open-weight (MIT) flagship with a 1M-token context at a fraction of frontier API cost.

Best for

  • Cost-sensitive hosted agents
  • Open-weight deployments
  • High-volume coding

Watch out

Self-hosting needs datacentre VRAM; hosted rates vary by provider. Price single-source — verify.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked September 5, 2026

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3 is Mistral's flagship — 262K-context, multimodal, Apache-2.0 open-weight at $0.50/$1.50.

Best for

  • Open-weight deployments
  • Multimodal EU-hosted inference
  • Balanced frontier work

Watch out

Verify multimodal support and EU data-residency on your endpoint.

When the cheaper one wins

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper on output at $1.50 per million tokens against $3.96 for DeepSeek V4 Pro — about 2.6×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: High

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

  • Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
  • 4/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: reasoning levels.
  • 2 shared named benchmarks with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, GPQA Diamond.
  • Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 6 days ago.
  • Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? DeepSeek V4 Pro · Mistral Large 3

Common questions

DeepSeek V4 Pro vs Mistral Large 3

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is DeepSeek V4 Pro or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for input?

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $0.50 per million input tokens, against $1.32 for DeepSeek V4 Pro — roughly 2.6× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; DeepSeek V4 Pro has tiered pricing: Official peak rates $1.32/$3.96 per MTok; off-peak $0.66/$1.98 (cache-miss). Open weights (MIT). 1.6T/49B active MoE. Mistral Large 3 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05/MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0), EU-hosted.

Is DeepSeek V4 Pro or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for output?

Mistral Large 3 is cheaper at $1.50 per million output tokens, against $3.96 for DeepSeek V4 Pro — roughly 2.6× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; DeepSeek V4 Pro has tiered pricing: Official peak rates $1.32/$3.96 per MTok; off-peak $0.66/$1.98 (cache-miss). Open weights (MIT). 1.6T/49B active MoE. Mistral Large 3 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $0.50/$1.50 per MTok; cached input $0.05/MTok. Open weights (Apache 2.0), EU-hosted.

Which has the larger context window, DeepSeek V4 Pro or Mistral Large 3?

DeepSeek V4 Pro accepts 1M tokens against 262K for Mistral Large 3. This only matters if you routinely send very long documents or large codebases.

Should I use DeepSeek V4 Pro or Mistral Large 3?

Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. DeepSeek V4 Pro suits cost-sensitive hosted agents; Mistral Large 3 suits open-weight deployments.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

  • Input price: Mistral Large 3 costs $0.50 per 1M tokens versus $1.32 for DeepSeek V4 Pro — a 2.6x difference at the headline tier.
  • Context: DeepSeek V4 Pro takes 1M against 262K for Mistral Large 3 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
  • Measured capability: DeepSeek V4 Pro leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 53 to 46 (measured 2026-08-14).
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