Mistral Large 2.1 vs Mixtral 8x7B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within 1 points (Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 40/100, Mistral Large 2.1 38/100, Mixtral 8x7B 37/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Qwen2.5 72B Instruct for raw capability and Mixtral 8x7B on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Mixtral 8x7B is cheaper at $0.70 input / $0.70 output per million tokens (official Mistral API price). Qwen2.5 72B Instruct costs $1.40 input / $5.60 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price); 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 $0.70 per million tokens for Mixtral 8x7B versus $2.45 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct (3.5× as much) and $3.00 for Mistral Large 2.1 (4.3× as much).

Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 129.0 (#128 of 148), Mistral Large 2.1 128.5 (#130 of 148) and Mixtral 8x7B 118.5 (#142 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (123.8–130.7 vs 123.8–130.8), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Mistral Large 2.1 51.3%, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 49.2%, Mixtral 8x7B 30.6%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Mistral Large 2.1, Mixtral 8x7B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Mistral Large 2.1 and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct have the largest context windows (131,072 and 131,072 tokens), against 32,000 for Mixtral 8x7B. Maximum output per response: Mistral Large 2.1 up to 16,384, Mixtral 8x7B up to 32,000, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct up to 8,192 tokens.

Mistral Large 2.1 accepts text; Mixtral 8x7B accepts text; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct accepts text. They handle the same number of input types.

Yes, all three publish their weights, so you can self-host them.

Mistral Large 2.1 is the newest, released Nov 18, 2024. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct came out Sep 19, 2024; Mixtral 8x7B came out Dec 11, 2023. Knowledge cutoff: Mistral Large 2.1 Nov 2024, Mixtral 8x7B Jan 2024, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 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.