OpenAI vs Mistral · synced 2026-08-11

gpt-5.6 vs ministral-8b-latest

ministral-8b-latest is 33.3× cheaper on input than gpt-5.6.

gpt-5.6 ministral-8b-latest
Input / 1M $5.00 $0.15
Cached input / 1M $0.50
Output / 1M $30.00 $0.15
Context window 1.1M 262K
Max output 128K 262K
Provider OpenAI Mistral
Vision Yes Yes
Tool calling Yes Yes
Token count exact estimated

Capability for the money

Independent measurement · Artificial Analysis · read 2026-08-11

Not the same tier: gpt-5.6 leads ministral-8b-latest by 43.6 points on following instructions (IFBench), for 75.0× the price.

  1. Following instructions

    extraction, classification, sticking to a format

    IFBench
    gpt-5.672.7%
    ministral-8b-latest29.1%

    gpt-5.6 +43.6

  2. Tool use

    multi-step agent work against real tools

    τ²-bench
    gpt-5.685.1%
    ministral-8b-latest26.6%

    gpt-5.6 +58.5

  3. Hard reasoning

    graduate-level science and multi-step analysis

    GPQA Diamond
    gpt-5.694.1%
    ministral-8b-latest47.1%

    gpt-5.6 +47.0

Averaged over the benchmarks both models sat, ministral-8b-latest returns 228.4 points of pass rate per dollar of blended price against 7.5 — the ratio that decides whether the dearer model earns its rate.

Each figure is a pass rate: the share of that test set the model answered correctly, measured by a third party rather than self-reported by the lab. Rows are different tests of different difficulty, so compare a model against the other model, not one row against the next. No published coding score for one of these models, so that lens is omitted. And a benchmark is not your workload — it narrows the shortlist, it does not pick for you.

Which to pick

List price is not production cost. Output length, cache hit rate, retries and task quality move the real number more than the headline rate does — price your own prompt on the token ledger before deciding.

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