GPT-4o vs Mistral Small 3.1 24B vs Mixtral 8x22B

Mistral Small 3.1 24B is the better all-round choice, scoring 55/100 against GPT-4o (43) and Mixtral 8x22B (33). It leads on price. GPT-4o wins on capability and inputs & features. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Mistral Small 3.1 24B is cheaper at $0.229 input / $0.436 output per million tokens (median across 2 API providers). Mixtral 8x22B costs $2.00 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official Mistral API price); GPT-4o costs $2.50 input / $10.00 output per million tokens (official OpenAI API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.281 per million tokens for Mistral Small 3.1 24B versus $3.00 for Mixtral 8x22B (11× as much) and $4.38 for GPT-4o (16× as much).

GPT-4o scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): GPT-4o 129.0 (#129 of 148), Mistral Small 3.1 24B 127.5 (#132 of 148) and Mixtral 8x22B 122.0 (#139 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (124.2–131.5 vs 122.6–129.4), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — GPT-4o 48.9%, Mistral Small 3.1 24B 47.5%, Mixtral 8x22B 34.1%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for GPT-4o, Mistral Small 3.1 24B and Mixtral 8x22B yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, GPT-4o leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

GPT-4o and Mistral Small 3.1 24B have the largest context windows (128,000 and 128,000 tokens), against 64,000 for Mixtral 8x22B. Maximum output per response: GPT-4o up to 16,384, Mistral Small 3.1 24B up to 16,384, Mixtral 8x22B up to 64,000 tokens.

GPT-4o accepts text, images and PDFs; Mistral Small 3.1 24B accepts text and images; Mixtral 8x22B accepts text. GPT-4o handles the widest range of inputs.

Mistral Small 3.1 24B and Mixtral 8x22B publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; GPT-4o is proprietary.

Mistral Small 3.1 24B is the newest, released Mar 17, 2025. GPT-4o came out May 13, 2024; Mixtral 8x22B came out Apr 17, 2024. Knowledge cutoff: GPT-4o Sep 2023, Mistral Small 3.1 24B Jun 2024, Mixtral 8x22B Apr 2024.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Oct 4, 2026.