MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) vs Mistral: Mistral Large 4
Side-by-side comparison of specs, pricing, benchmark scores, and task rankings. Updated 2026-10-20.
| MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) | Mistral: Mistral Large 4 | |
|---|---|---|
| Vendor | minimax | mistralai |
| Quality Score | 100 | 100 |
| Input Price | Free | $0.68/M |
| Output Price | Free | $2.09/M |
| Context Window | 1,000,000 | 1,048,576 |
| Max Output | 524,288 | 262,144 |
| Tool Calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| Structured Output | ✓ | ✓ |
| Reasoning Mode | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision | ✓ | ✓ |
| Audio | - | - |
The verdict
For a sample job of 1 million input tokens and 250,000 output tokens, MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) costs $0 and Mistral Large 4 costs $1.20, so MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) is free for the same work.
Both take in a similar amount of text: 1,000,000 and 1,048,576 tokens, about 1,500 and 1,573 pages.
Only MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) offers video input.
Across the 10 tasks where they differ, MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) scores higher on 10 (SQL Generation, Code Completion, Code Documentation and others).
Pick MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) if you need lower cost, video input or the stronger all-round task scores.
Costs use current list prices per million tokens; page counts assume about 0.75 words per token and 500 words per page.
Who wins by task?
| Task | MiniMax: MiniMax M3.1 Flash (free) | Mistral: Mistral Large 4 |
|---|---|---|
| SQL Generation | 134 | 133 |
| Code Completion | 132 | 131 |
| Code Documentation | 132 | 131 |
| Regex Writing | 120 | 119 |
| CSV / Spreadsheet Cleanup | 134 | 133 |
| JSON Extraction | 132 | 131 |
| Bulk Data Labeling | 130 | 129 |
| Long-Document Summarization | 138 | 137 |
| Short-Form Summarization | 124 | 123 |
| Blog Post Writing | 122 | 121 |
Scores reflect capability match + benchmark data + pricing for each task. Methodology →