Llama 4 Maverick vs Mistral Medium 3
Meta · US | Mistral AI · France · Updated June 2026
Quick verdict
Pick Llama 4 Maverick for open weights, 1m context or strong image + text understanding. Pick Mistral Medium 3 for strong cost-to-capability at $0.40/$2.00 or general reasoning, coding and multimodal tasks. Choose Llama 4 Maverick if you need self-hosting or data privacy; Mistral Medium 3 if you want a managed API.
Llama 4 Maverick (Meta, US) and Mistral Medium 3 (Mistral AI, France) line up two different AI ecosystems against each other — a comparison that is as much about cost philosophy and openness as raw capability. Llama 4 Maverick is meta's open-weight 1M-context multimodal model for self-hosted deployments. Mistral Medium 3 is mistral's mid-tier model at $0.40/$2.00 — efficient general capability with a 128K window, below the 1M-context frontier tier. They diverge most on price, context window and open vs. closed weights — each quantified below from the models' real specs.
Key differences at a glance
- ▸Cost model: Llama 4 Maverick ships open weights you can self-host (hardware cost only, no per-token fee), while Mistral Medium 3 is API-metered at $0.4/$2 per 1M tokens. Your choice depends on whether you want zero marginal cost at the price of running infrastructure.
- ▸Context window: Llama 4 Maverick holds 7.8× more — 1M (~1,500 pages) vs 128K (~192 pages). But effective recall usually fades long before the advertised ceiling, so the bigger number only helps if the model reasons over it.
- ▸Recency: Mistral Medium 3 is the newer model by about 32 days (released May 7, 2025), usually meaning fresher training data and capabilities.
- ▸Ecosystem: this is a US-vs-France matchup — they differ in pricing philosophy, data-residency options, and tooling ecosystems, not only benchmarks.
Side-by-side specs
| Spec | Llama 4 Maverick | Mistral Medium 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta (US) | Mistral AI (France) |
| Released | April 2025 | May 7, 2025 |
| Context window | 1M (~1,500 pages) | 128K (~192 pages) |
| Price (in/out) | Open weight (self-host / free) | $0.4/$2 per 1M tokens |
| Open weight? | Yes — self-hostable | No — API only |
| Modalities | text, image, code | text, image, code |
| SWE-Bench Verified | Not published | Not published |
| MRCR v2 @ 1M | Not published | Not published |
Who wins what
Open weights, 1M context
Llama 4 Maverick
Its 1M window holds about 7.8× more than Mistral Medium 3's 128K in a single prompt.
Strong image + text understanding
Llama 4 Maverick
Meta's open-weight 1M-context multimodal model for self-hosted deployments — and it carries the larger 1M context.
Self-hostable
Llama 4 Maverick
Open weights make this possible at all — Mistral Medium 3 is API-only, so it cannot leave the vendor's servers.
Strong cost-to-capability at $0.40/$2.00
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral's mid-tier model at $0.40/$2.00 — efficient general capability with a 128K window, below the 1M-context frontier tier — and it is the newer of the two.
General reasoning, coding and multimodal tasks
Mistral Medium 3
Llama 4 Maverick is comparatively weak here — trails closed frontier on reasoning
Efficient mid-tier deployment for production workloads
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral Medium 3 lists efficient mid-tier deployment for production workloads among its strengths; Llama 4 Maverick does not.
Lowest cost at scale
Llama 4 Maverick
Its weights are open, so at volume you pay for your own hardware instead of Mistral Medium 3's $0.4/$2 per 1M tokens.
Largest single-prompt input
Llama 4 Maverick
Its 1M window is about 7.8× larger than Mistral Medium 3's 128K, fitting roughly 1,500 pages in one prompt.
Which should you pick?
A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume
→ Llama 4 Maverick
At Open weight (self-host / free) it undercuts Mistral Medium 3, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.
Someone analysing very long documents or codebases
→ Llama 4 Maverick
Larger 1M window fits more in one prompt.
A team with data-privacy or self-hosting needs
→ Llama 4 Maverick
Open weights let you run it on your own hardware; Mistral Medium 3 is API-only.
Anyone whose priority is open weights, 1m context
→ Llama 4 Maverick
It is specifically built for that.
Anyone whose priority is strong cost-to-capability at $0.40/$2.00
→ Mistral Medium 3
That is its strongest area.
An enterprise with regional data-residency rules
→ Llama 4 Maverick or Mistral Medium 3
Origin (US vs France) affects where data is processed and which compliance regime applies — check the provider's terms for your region.
Llama 4 Maverick: where it fits
Meta's open-weight 1M-context multimodal model for self-hosted deployments. Released April 2025 by Meta, it is built for open weights, 1M context, strong image + text understanding, self-hostable, and 400B MoE, 17B active.
Its trade-offs are real: needs serious hardware to self-host, and trails closed frontier on reasoning. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.
Mistral Medium 3: where it fits
Mistral's mid-tier model at $0.40/$2.00 — efficient general capability with a 128K window, below the 1M-context frontier tier. Released May 7, 2025 by Mistral AI, it is built for strong cost-to-capability at $0.40/$2.00, general reasoning, coding and multimodal tasks, efficient mid-tier deployment for production workloads, and text and image input.
Its trade-offs: a 128K context — smaller than the 1M-window flagships here, no published SWE-Bench Verified score, a mid-tier model, not a frontier reasoner, and proprietary, unlike Mistral's open-weight releases. At $0.4 in / $2 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.
The bottom line for this matchup
The defining split here is open vs. closed. Llama 4 Maverick gives you weights you control — self-host it, fine-tune it, keep data in-house, pay only for hardware. Mistral Medium 3 gives you a managed, always-updated API with no infrastructure to run. Teams with GPUs, privacy requirements, or huge volume often favour the open model; teams that want zero ops and the latest capabilities favour the closed one. Capability is close enough that this operational question, not the benchmark, usually decides it.
Want both Llama 4 Maverick and Mistral Medium 3 without two subscriptions? LumiChats gives you these plus 40+ models under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day) — draft with one, cross-check with the other.
See pricingFrequently asked questions
Is Llama 4 Maverick or Mistral Medium 3 better for coding?
Public SWE-Bench figures are not available for either model, so the honest test is your own repository — run an identical real bug through both. By design, Llama 4 Maverick leans toward open weights, 1m context while Mistral Medium 3 leans toward strong cost-to-capability at $0.40/$2.00, and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.
Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Maverick or Mistral Medium 3?
Llama 4 Maverick is open-weight, so self-hosting means no per-token fee (you pay for hardware instead), while Mistral Medium 3 is API-metered at $0.4/$2 per 1M tokens. For most teams without GPUs, the API model is cheaper to start; at very high volume, self-hosting can win.
Which has the bigger context window?
Llama 4 Maverick — 1M vs 128K, about 7.8× larger. Useful only if the model actually reasons over the full window, which not all do.
Can I use both Llama 4 Maverick and Mistral Medium 3 together?
Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you Llama 4 Maverick, Mistral Medium 3 and 40+ others under one ₹69/day pass (about $1/day), so you can draft with one and cross-check with the other instead of buying two subscriptions.
Which is newer, Llama 4 Maverick or Mistral Medium 3?
Mistral Medium 3 — released May 7, 2025, about 32 days after Llama 4 Maverick.
Related comparisons
Specifications and benchmarks reflect publicly reported figures as of June 2026 and may change as providers release updates. Always verify on your own workload.