Llama 3 8B Instruct vs Mistral Large 2
Llama 3 8B Instruct (2024) and Mistral Large 2 (2025) are compact production models from AI at Meta and MistralAI. Llama 3 8B Instruct ships a 8k-token context window, while Mistral Large 2 ships a 128k-token context window. On MMLU PRO, Mistral Large 2 leads by 29.2 pts. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Llama 3 8B Instruct is ~2300% cheaper at $0.02/1M; pay for Mistral Large 2 only for long-context analysis.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Mistral Large 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | provider-routed production | multimodal apps, tool-calling agents, and provider-routed production |
| Decision fit | Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use | Coding, RAG, and Agents |
| Context window | 8k | 128k |
| Cheapest output | $0.05/1M tokens | $2.40/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 17 tracked | 3 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 4 shared | MMLU PRO leader |
Decision tradeoffs
- Llama 3 8B Instruct has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $0.05/1M tokens.
- Llama 3 8B Instruct has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
- Local decision data tags Llama 3 8B Instruct for Coding, Classification, and JSON / Tool use.
- Mistral Large 2 holds a shared-benchmark lead on MMLU PRO, ahead by 29.2 points.
- Mistral Large 2 has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Mistral Large 2 uniquely exposes Vision, Multimodal, and JSON / Tool use in local model data.
- Local decision data tags Mistral Large 2 for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Llama 3 8B Instruct
$28.50
Cheapest tracked route/tier: DeepInfra
Mistral Large 2
$984
Cheapest tracked route/tier: AWS Bedrock
Estimated monthly gap: $956. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on IBM watsonx and AWS Bedrock; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Mistral Large 2 is $2.35/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
- Mistral Large 2 adds Vision, Multimodal, and JSON / Tool use in local capability data.
- Provider overlap exists on AWS Bedrock and IBM watsonx; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Llama 3 8B Instruct is $2.35/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
- Check replacement coverage for Vision, Multimodal, and JSON / Tool use before moving production traffic.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2024-04-18 | 2025-11-25 |
| Context window | 8k | 128k |
| Parameters | 8B | 123B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Llama 3 Community | Mistral License |
| Openness | Open weights | Open weights |
| Weights | Available | Unknown |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: non-commercial |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2023-03 | 2025-07 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Mistral Large 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.02/1M tokens | $0.48/1M tokens |
| Output price | $0.05/1M tokens | $2.40/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Mistral Large 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | Yes |
| Multimodal | No | Yes |
| Reasoning | No | No |
| JSON / Tool use | No | Yes |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | No | No |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Llama 3 8B Instruct | Mistral Large 2 |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU PRO | 40.5 | 69.7 |
| HumanEval | 68.2 | 84.8 |
| Massive Multitask Language Understanding | 76.9 | 84.0 |
| HellaSwag | 91.1 | 93.8 |
Continue comparing
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- Together AI - Llama 3 8B Lite vs Mistral Large 3 675B Instruct
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- Claude Opus 4.7 vs Mistral Large 2
- Grok-3 vs Mistral Large 2
- DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Mistral Large 2
- Grok 4 vs Mistral Large 2
- Mistral Large 2 vs Phi-3 Mini 4k
- DeepSeek V4 Flash vs Llama 3 8B Instruct
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-11. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.