Ministral 8B Instruct vs Mistral Large 2.1 vs Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within a point (Ministral 8B Instruct 42/100, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 42/100, Mistral Large 2.1 39/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Mistral Large 2.1 for raw capability and Ministral 8B Instruct on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%. Capability uses the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond), because Ministral 8B Instruct has no Capabilities Index score yet.

Ministral 8B Instruct is cheaper at $0.15 input / $0.15 output per million tokens (median across 1 API provider). Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct costs $0.152 input / $0.167 output per million tokens (median across 9 API providers); Mistral Large 2.1 costs $2.00 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official Mistral API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.15 per million tokens for Ministral 8B Instruct versus $0.156 for Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct (1× as much) and $3.00 for Mistral Large 2.1 (20× as much).

Not every model here has a Capabilities Index score, so we compare the average of shared benchmarks (GPQA Diamond): Mistral Large 2.1 51.3%, Ministral 8B Instruct 27.2% and Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 27.0%. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Mistral Large 2.1 51.3%, Ministral 8B Instruct 27.2%, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct 27.0%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Ministral 8B Instruct, Mistral Large 2.1 and Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Mistral Large 2.1 leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Ministral 8B Instruct and Mistral Large 2.1 have the largest context windows (131,072 and 131,072 tokens), against 128,000 for Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct. Maximum output per response: Ministral 8B Instruct up to 8,192, Mistral Large 2.1 up to 16,384, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct up to 4,096 tokens.

Ministral 8B Instruct accepts text; Mistral Large 2.1 accepts text; Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct accepts text. They handle the same number of input types.

Yes, all three publish their weights (Mistral Research License), so you can self-host them.

Mistral Large 2.1 is the newest, released Nov 18, 2024. Ministral 8B Instruct came out Oct 16, 2024; Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct came out Jul 23, 2024. Knowledge cutoff: Mistral Large 2.1 Nov 2024, Llama-3.1-8B-Instruct Dec 2023.

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.