Mixtral 8x7B vs Qwen2.5 72B Instruct vs Claude Haiku 3
Claude Haiku 3 comes out ahead, 47 to 40 and 37 on our weighted score, and it is the cheaper option too.
Mistral AIMixtral 8x7B
37/100- ECI118.5
- Price$0.70 / $0.70
- Context32K
Alibaba (Qwen)Qwen2.5 72B Instruct
40/100- ECI129.0
- Price$1.40 / $5.60
- Context131K
- Our pick
AnthropicClaude Haiku 3
47/100- ECI118.4
- Price$0.25 / $1.25
- Context200K
Claude Haiku 3 is our pick
Claude Haiku 3 is the better all-round choice, scoring 47/100 against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct (40) and Mixtral 8x7B (37). It leads on price, inputs & features and context window. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct wins on capability. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.
- CapabilityQwen2.5 72B InstructCapabilities Index (ECI): Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 129.0 · Mixtral 8x7B 118.5 · Claude Haiku 3 118.4
- Lowest priceClaude Haiku 3Claude Haiku 3 $0.50 · Mixtral 8x7B $0.70 · Qwen2.5 72B Instruct $2.45 per 1M tokens (3:1 blend)
- Longest contextClaude Haiku 3Claude Haiku 3 200,000 · Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 131,072 · Mixtral 8x7B 32,000 tokens
- Widest inputsClaude Haiku 3Mixtral 8x7B: Text · Qwen2.5 72B Instruct: Text · Claude Haiku 3: Text, Images, PDFs
- Self-hostingMixtral 8x7B and Qwen2.5 72B InstructPublishes downloadable weights
| Measure | Weight | Mixtral 8x7B | Qwen2.5 72B Instruct | Claude Haiku 3 |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| CapabilityCapabilities Index (ECI) | 50% | 38 | 52 | 38 |
| Price | 25% | 57 | 31 | 64 |
| Inputs & features | 15% | 25 | 25 | 60 |
| Context window | 10% | 0 | 24 | 32 |
| Overall | 100% | 37/100 | 40/100 | 47/100 |
Every spec in one table
Highlighted cells lead their row. Dashes mean the data is not published.
| Specification | Mixtral 8x7BMistral AI | Qwen2.5 72B InstructAlibaba (Qwen) | Claude Haiku 3Anthropic |
|---|---|---|---|
| Capability | |||
| Capabilities Index (ECI) | 118.5 | 129.0 (best) | 118.4 |
| ECI rank | #142 of 148 | #128 of 148 (best) | #143 of 148 |
| GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions | 30.6% | 49.2% (best) | 36.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics | — | 8.1% (best) | 1.8% |
| Price per million tokens | |||
| Input | $0.70 | $1.40 | $0.25 (best) |
| Output | $0.70 (best) | $5.60 | $1.25 |
| Cached input | — | — | — |
| Blended (3:1) | $0.70 | $2.45 | $0.50 (best) |
| Long-context rate | Same rate | Same rate | Same rate |
| Price source | Official Mistral API | Official Alibaba API | Median of 2 providers |
| Limits | |||
| Context window | 32,000 tokens | 131,072 tokens | 200,000 tokens (best) |
| Max output | 32,000 tokens (best) | 8,192 tokens | 4,096 tokens |
| Inputs and features | |||
| Text | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Images | No | No | Yes |
| PDFs | No | No | Yes |
| Audio | No | No | No |
| Video | No | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | No | No |
| Tool calling | Yes | Yes | Yes |
| Structured output | No | No | No |
| Availability | |||
| Weights | Open | Open | Proprietary |
| API model ID | open-mixtral-8x7b | qwen2-5-72b-instruct | — |
| API providers | 1 | 1 | 2 (best) |
| Released | Dec 11, 2023 | Sep 19, 2024 | Mar 13, 2024 |
| Knowledge cutoff | Jan 2024 | Apr 2024 | Aug 31, 2023 |
What would a month cost?
Enter your expected volume in millions of tokens. List prices only; caching and batch discounts would lower these.
- Mixtral 8x7B$8.40
- Qwen2.5 72B Instruct$25.20
- Claude Haiku 3$5.00
Which should you choose?
Which is better: Mixtral 8x7B, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct or Claude Haiku 3?
Claude Haiku 3 is the better all-round choice, scoring 47/100 against Qwen2.5 72B Instruct (40) and Mixtral 8x7B (37). It leads on price, inputs & features and context window. Qwen2.5 72B Instruct wins on capability. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.
Which is cheaper, Mixtral 8x7B, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct or Claude Haiku 3?
Claude Haiku 3 is cheaper at $0.25 input / $1.25 output per million tokens (median across 2 API providers). Mixtral 8x7B costs $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). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.50 per million tokens for Claude Haiku 3 versus $0.70 for Mixtral 8x7B (1.4× as much) and $2.45 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct (4.9× as much).
Which scores higher on benchmarks?
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 129.0 (#128 of 148), Mixtral 8x7B 118.5 (#142 of 148) and Claude Haiku 3 118.4 (#143 of 148). Their confidence ranges do not overlap (123.8–130.7 vs 111.3–121.3), so the gap is a real one. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — Qwen2.5 72B Instruct 49.2%, Claude Haiku 3 36.3%, Mixtral 8x7B 30.6%.
Which is better for coding?
There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Mixtral 8x7B, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct and Claude Haiku 3 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.
Which has the bigger context window?
Claude Haiku 3 has the largest context window at 200,000 tokens, against 131,072 for Qwen2.5 72B Instruct and 32,000 for Mixtral 8x7B. Maximum output per response: Mixtral 8x7B up to 32,000, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct up to 8,192, Claude Haiku 3 up to 4,096 tokens.
Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?
Mixtral 8x7B accepts text; Qwen2.5 72B Instruct accepts text; Claude Haiku 3 accepts text, images and PDFs. Claude Haiku 3 handles the widest range of inputs.
Are any of these open source?
Mixtral 8x7B and Qwen2.5 72B Instruct publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; Claude Haiku 3 is proprietary.
Which is newer?
Qwen2.5 72B Instruct is the newest, released Sep 19, 2024. Claude Haiku 3 came out Mar 13, 2024; Mixtral 8x7B came out Dec 11, 2023. Knowledge cutoff: Mixtral 8x7B Jan 2024, Qwen2.5 72B Instruct Apr 2024, Claude Haiku 3 Aug 31, 2023.
How do you decide the winner?
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.
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