mistral-large-3 vs sonar-pro
mistral-large-3 is 6.0× cheaper on input than sonar-pro.
| mistral-large-3 | sonar-pro | |
|---|---|---|
| Input / 1M | $0.50 | $3.00 |
| Cached input / 1M | — | — |
| Output / 1M | $1.50 | $15.00 |
| Context window | 262K | 200K |
| Max output | 262K | 8K |
| Provider | Mistral | Perplexity |
| Vision | Yes | No |
| Tool calling | Yes | No |
| Token count | estimated | estimated |
Capability for the money
Independent measurement · Artificial Analysis · read 2026-08-11mistral-large-3 is 8.0× cheaper than sonar-pro and scores higher on every benchmark they share — there is no case for paying more here.
Coding
writing and fixing code
LiveCodeBenchmistral-large-3 +19.0
Hard reasoning
graduate-level science and multi-step analysis
GPQA Diamondmistral-large-3 +10.2
Averaged over the benchmarks both models sat, mistral-large-3 returns 76.3 points of pass rate per dollar of blended price against 7.1 — 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 following instructions or tool use score for one of these models, so those lenses are omitted. And a benchmark is not your workload — it narrows the shortlist, it does not pick for you.
Which to pick
- Cheaper input: mistral-large-3
- Cheaper output: mistral-large-3
- Larger context: mistral-large-3
- Better at coding: mistral-large-3 (46.5% vs 27.5% on LiveCodeBench)
- Better at hard reasoning: mistral-large-3 (68.0% vs 57.8% on GPQA Diamond)
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.
Related comparisons
mistral-large-3 detail · sonar-pro detail · All Mistral pricing · All comparisons