Model comparison
MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Large 3
MiniMax 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
MiniMax
MiniMax M3
Frontier · Open weights
Mistral
Mistral Large 3
Frontier · Open weights
| Specification | MiniMax M3 | Mistral Large 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | MiniMax | Mistral |
| Tier | Frontier | Frontier |
| Context window | Winner: 1M | 262K |
| Max output | Not verifiedUnverified | 262K |
| Input / 1M tokens | Winner: $0.30 | $0.50 |
| Output / 1M tokens | Winner: $1.20 | $1.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Parameters | 428B total / 23B active (MoE) | 675B total / 41B active (sparse MoE) |
| Reasoning levels | low, high, max | Not verifiedUnverified |
| Modalities | text, image, video | text, image |
| License | Not disclosedUnverified | Apache 2.0 |
| API model id | minimax-m3 | mistral-large-3 |
| Released | June 1, 2026 | December 1, 2025 |
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-08-14) | Winner: 51 | 46 |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (2026-06-01) | 66 | Not verifiedUnverified |
| GPQA Diamond (2025-12-02) | Not verifiedUnverified | 43.9 |
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).
- 2026-06-01: MiniMax blog (vendor, Terminus 2 scaffolding, 2h timeout)Agentic terminal work: multi-step tasks executed in a sandboxed shell environment. Comparability: comparable with caveat — Scores across Terminal-Bench major versions (v1 vs v2) are NOT comparable; harness configuration (container, time limits) also shifts results.
- 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: MiniMax M3: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above. · 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.
MiniMax M3
MiniMax M3 is an open-weight (community license) 428B MoE with native multimodal and 1M context.
Best for
- Open-weight deployments
- Multimodal
- Long-context
Watch out
Community license, not fully open; verify terms.
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
MiniMax M3 is cheaper on output at $1.20 per million tokens against $1.50 for Mistral Large 3 — about 1.3×. 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.
Run the model pickerEvidence 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.
- 3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, reasoning levels.
- 1 shared named benchmark with differing scores — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index.
- 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.
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax — M3 (accessed 2026-08-29)
- MiniMax M3: MiniMax M3 release (accessed 2026-08-29)
- Mistral Large 3: Mistral docs — mistral-large-2512 (675B total / 41B active, 256K) (accessed 2026-09-05)
- Mistral Large 3: Mistral — Introducing Mistral 3 (sparse MoE parameters) (accessed 2026-09-05)
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- Claude Mythos 5.1 vs Mistral Large 3
Diving deeper on one model? MiniMax M3 · Mistral Large 3
Common questions
MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Large 3
Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.
Is MiniMax M3 or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for input?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $0.30 per million input tokens, against $0.50 for Mistral Large 3 — roughly 1.7× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; MiniMax M3 has tiered pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above. 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 MiniMax M3 or Mistral Large 3 cheaper for output?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper at $1.20 per million output tokens, against $1.50 for Mistral Large 3 — roughly 1.3× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; MiniMax M3 has tiered pricing: $0.30/$1.20 per MTok; open (community license). 428B/23B active MoE, native multimodal. Rate is the ≤512K-prompt tier; higher above. 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, MiniMax M3 or Mistral Large 3?
MiniMax M3 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 MiniMax M3 or Mistral Large 3?
Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. MiniMax M3 suits open-weight deployments; 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: MiniMax M3 costs $0.30 per 1M tokens versus $0.50 for Mistral Large 3 — a 1.7x difference at the headline tier.
- Context: MiniMax M3 takes 1M against 262K for Mistral Large 3 — only decisive if your prompts approach the smaller window.
- Measured capability: MiniMax M3 leads Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index 51 to 46 (measured 2026-08-14).
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