Llama vs Mistral

Meta's Llama and Mistral AI

Llama is Meta's family of open-weight AI models. Mistral is the model family from Mistral AI, a company based in France. Both publish downloadable models, and both are offered by cloud providers. Mistral mixes fully open models under the Apache 2.0 license with commercial models offered through its platform, while Meta's Llama models all come under Meta's own community licenses.

This comparison covers the models available in October 2026. Our site runs Llama only; Mistral models are not available in our chat.

Llama vs Mistral at a glance

Prices are OpenRouter list price, Oct 2026.

Mistral's current lineup

The open model most comparable to Llama 4 is Mistral Small 4, released in March 2026. Its model card describes a mixture-of-experts model with 119 billion parameters, 128 experts with 4 active, and 6.5 billion parameters working on each token. It accepts text and images, has a 256K context window, supports dozens of languages, and combines instruction following, reasoning and coding in one model, with a reasoning mode you can switch on per request. It is released under Apache 2.0.

Above it, Mistral offers larger models. Mistral Large 3, from December 2025, is a mixture-of-experts model with 41 billion active and 675 billion total parameters, also under Apache 2.0. Mistral Medium 3.5, from April 2026, is a dense 128-billion-parameter model, and Mistral Large 4, from October 2026, is the company's newest flagship with text and image input and a context window of about one million tokens. We did not find downloadable weights for Medium 3.5 or Large 4; they are available through APIs.

How Llama 4 compares

Llama 4 Scout has 17 billion active parameters out of 109 billion; Maverick has 17 billion active out of 400 billion. Both read images, both officially support 12 languages, and their training data ends in August 2024. Mistral Small 4 is similar in total size to Scout but uses fewer active parameters per token, which tends to make it fast, and it adds a reasoning mode. Being about a year newer, Mistral Small 4 also has fresher training data.

Llama's advantages over Small 4 are Maverick's larger total capacity, very long context in Meta's model cards (10 million tokens for Scout), and a very large ecosystem of tools and fine-tuned versions. Note that providers and our chat use much shorter limits than the model cards; see our Llama 4 Scout page.

Licensing

Mistral Small 4 and Mistral Large 3 use Apache 2.0, a standard open-source license that allows commercial and non-commercial use with few conditions. Llama 4's community license also permits commercial use, but adds the acceptable use policy, "Built with Llama" attribution, a naming rule for fine-tuned models, the 700 million monthly active user threshold and an EU restriction for multimodal models. That last point is notable here: Mistral's Apache 2.0 models carry no such regional restriction. Our license guide explains Llama's terms.

Running them yourself

Mistral's card lists vLLM, llama.cpp, LM Studio, SGLang and Transformers as ways to run Small 4. Llama 4 runs in the same kinds of tools, including Ollama, where Scout is a 67 GB download and Maverick 245 GB. Both Scout and Small 4 are workstation or server models rather than laptop models. For a light local model, Llama 3.1 8B is far easier; see run Llama locally.

Cost

Through APIs, Llama 4 Scout at $0.10 input and $0.30 output per million tokens is slightly cheaper than Mistral Small 4 at $0.15 and $0.60. Maverick at $0.1875 and $0.6525 is close to Small 4. Mistral's bigger models cost more: Large 3 is $0.50 and $1.50, Medium 3.5 is $1.50 and $7.50, and Large 4 is $1.36 and $4.18 (OpenRouter list price, Oct 2026).

How to decide in practice

Write down three or four tasks you actually need, such as summarizing a report, answering customer questions or reading invoices from photos. Run each through Llama 4 and Mistral Small 4, ideally with the reasoning mode both off and on for Mistral. Compare the answers, the speed and the cost per answer. Then check the license against your company's location and size. For a quick first impression of Llama, our free chat needs no account.

Choose Llama if…

• you want a large open model that reads images natively, Maverick, with more total capacity than Mistral Small 4;
• you rely on tools, tutorials and fine-tunes built around Llama;
• you want quick, direct answers without configuring a reasoning mode;
• you want to try it for free online right now.

Chat with Llama 4 Scout

Choose Mistral if…

• you want an Apache 2.0 license with no EU restriction;
• you need a newer open model with a switchable reasoning mode;
• you prefer a European AI provider;
• you want Mistral's newest hosted flagship, Large 4, through an API.

See also Llama vs Qwen, Llama vs DeepSeek and Llama history.

FAQ

Is Mistral open source?

Some Mistral models are: Mistral Small 4 and Mistral Large 3 use Apache 2.0. Others, such as Medium 3.5 and Large 4, are offered through APIs.

Is Mistral better than Llama?

Mistral Small 4 is newer and adds a reasoning mode. Llama 4 Maverick is larger in total than Small 4, while Mistral Large 3 is larger still. Test them on your own tasks.

Can I use Mistral in the Llama.Online chat?

No. Our chat runs only Llama models. Mistral is not available here.

Which is better for European companies?

Mistral's Apache 2.0 models have no regional restriction, while Llama 4's multimodal models do not grant license rights to EU-based companies. This is general information, not legal advice.