Mixtral 8x22BvsMistral Medium
Mistral AI vs Mistral AI — Side-by-side model comparison
Head-to-Head Comparison
| Metric | Mixtral 8x22B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | ||
| Arena Rank | #16 | #16 |
| Context Window | 64K | 128K |
| Input Pricing | $0.90/1M tokens | $0.40/1M tokens |
| Output Pricing | $2.70/1M tokens | $2.00/1M tokens |
| Parameters | 176B (39B active) | Undisclosed |
| Open Source | Yes | No |
| Best For | Efficient reasoning, multilingual, coding | Enterprise tasks, European languages |
| Release Date | Apr 17, 2024 | Jan 15, 2025 |
Mixtral 8x22B
Mixtral 8x22B is Mistral AI's large mixture-of-experts model that uses a sparse architecture to achieve strong performance while activating only a fraction of its total parameters per token. With 176 billion total parameters but only 39 billion active per forward pass, it delivers efficiency that makes it practical to deploy despite its size. It features a 64K context window and excels at multilingual tasks, coding, and mathematical reasoning.
View Mistral AI profile →Mistral Medium
Mistral Medium is Mistral AI's mid-tier model offering a balanced combination of performance and cost-efficiency. Built in Europe with strong multilingual support, it handles enterprise tasks, code generation, and structured data extraction competently. With a 128K context window and competitive pricing, it serves as a practical choice for production applications that need reliable performance without the cost of Mistral Large. The model is particularly strong in European languages, making it popular among EU-based organizations prioritizing data sovereignty.
View Mistral AI profile →Key Differences: Mixtral 8x22B vs Mistral Medium
Mistral Medium is 1.5x cheaper on average, making it the better choice for high-volume applications.
Mistral Medium supports a larger context window (128K), allowing it to process longer documents in a single request.
Mixtral 8x22B is open-source (free to self-host and fine-tune) while Mistral Medium is proprietary (API-only access).
When to use Mixtral 8x22B
- +Quality matters more than cost
- +You need to self-host or fine-tune the model
- +Your use case involves efficient reasoning, multilingual, coding
When to use Mistral Medium
- +Budget is a concern and you need cost efficiency
- +You need to process long documents (128K context)
- +You prefer a managed API without infrastructure overhead
- +Your use case involves enterprise tasks, european languages
Cost Analysis
At current pricing, Mistral Medium is 1.5x more affordable than Mixtral 8x22B. For a typical enterprise workload processing 100M tokens per month:
Mixtral 8x22B monthly cost
$180
100M tokens/mo (50/50 in/out)
Mistral Medium monthly cost
$120
100M tokens/mo (50/50 in/out)
The Verdict
Mistral Medium wins our head-to-head comparison with 3 out of 5 category wins. It's the stronger choice for enterprise tasks, european languages, though Mixtral 8x22B holds an edge in efficient reasoning, multilingual, coding.
Last compared: March 2026 · Data sourced from public benchmarks and official pricing pages