Llama 4 Scout vs Mistral NeMo

Meta · US  |  Mistral · France · Updated June 2026

Quick verdict

Pick Llama 4 Scout for largest advertised context (10m) or open weights, single-gpu friendly. Pick Mistral NeMo for multilingual understanding across 11+ languages or runs on a single gpu with fp8 quantization-aware training. On a tight budget at scale, Llama 4 Scout is the value pick.

Llama 4 Scout (Meta, US) and Mistral NeMo (Mistral, 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 Scout is the 10M-token open-weight giant — enormous on paper, but usable recall is far smaller. Mistral NeMo is a 12B Apache-2.0 open-weight model co-developed by Mistral and NVIDIA, pairing a 128K context and strong multilingual performance with efficiency that fits on a single GPU. They diverge most on price and context window — each quantified below from the models' real specs.

Key differences at a glance

Side-by-side specs

SpecLlama 4 ScoutMistral NeMo
ProviderMeta (US) Mistral (France)
ReleasedApril 2025 July 18, 2024
Context window10M (~15,000 pages) 128K (~197 pages)
Price (in/out)Open weight (self-host / free) $0.02/$0.03 per 1M tokens
Open weight?Yes — self-hostable Yes — self-hostable
Modalitiestext, image, code text
SWE-Bench VerifiedNot published Not published
MRCR v2 @ 1M15% Not published

Who wins what

Largest advertised context (10M)

Llama 4 Scout

A core design strength of Llama 4 Scout.

Open weights, single-GPU friendly

Llama 4 Scout

A core design strength of Llama 4 Scout.

Self-hosted, data-private deployment

Llama 4 Scout

A core design strength of Llama 4 Scout.

Multilingual understanding across 11+ languages

Mistral NeMo

A core design strength of Mistral NeMo.

Runs on a single GPU with FP8 quantization-aware training

Mistral NeMo

A core design strength of Mistral NeMo.

128K-token context for long documents

Mistral NeMo

A core design strength of Mistral NeMo.

Lowest cost at scale

Llama 4 Scout

At Open weight (self-host / free), it is the cheaper of the two — the gap dominates the bill on high-volume workloads.

Largest single-prompt input

Llama 4 Scout

Its 10M window is about 76× larger, fitting roughly 15,000 pages in one prompt.

Which should you pick?

A cost-sensitive startup shipping high volume

Llama 4 Scout

At Open weight (self-host / free) it undercuts Mistral NeMo, and on millions of tokens that margin decides the monthly bill.

Someone analysing very long documents or codebases

Llama 4 Scout

Larger 10M window fits more in one prompt.

Anyone whose priority is largest advertised context (10m)

Llama 4 Scout

It is specifically built for that.

Anyone whose priority is multilingual understanding across 11+ languages

Mistral NeMo

That is its strongest area.

An enterprise with regional data-residency rules

Llama 4 Scout or Mistral NeMo

Origin (US vs France) affects where data is processed and which compliance regime applies — check the provider's terms for your region.

Llama 4 Scout: where it fits

The 10M-token open-weight giant — enormous on paper, but usable recall is far smaller. Released April 2025 by Meta, it is built for largest advertised context (10M), open weights, single-GPU friendly, self-hosted, data-private deployment, and retrieval over very long inputs.

Its trade-offs are real: effective recall degrades far below 10M, and ~15% on long-context multi-needle reasoning. As an open-weight model, its running cost is your own hardware rather than a per-token fee.

Mistral NeMo: where it fits

A 12B Apache-2.0 open-weight model co-developed by Mistral and NVIDIA, pairing a 128K context and strong multilingual performance with efficiency that fits on a single GPU. Released July 18, 2024 by Mistral, it is built for multilingual understanding across 11+ languages, runs on a single GPU with FP8 quantization-aware training, 128K-token context for long documents, and function calling and structured tool use.

Its trade-offs: 12B scale trails larger frontier models on complex reasoning and coding, and text-only; no vision or audio input. At $0.02 in / $0.03 out per million tokens, it sits in the budget price band.

The bottom line for this matchup

This is less "which is smarter" and more "which ecosystem fits." Llama 4 Scout (US) and Mistral NeMo (France) differ on pricing philosophy, data-residency, and tooling as much as on raw scores. Llama 4 Scout is the cheaper option, which matters at volume. The pragmatic move is to run one real task through both and judge the outputs against your own constraints — including where your data is allowed to be processed.

Want both Llama 4 Scout and Mistral NeMo 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 pricing

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 4 Scout or Mistral NeMo 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 Scout leans toward largest advertised context (10m) while Mistral NeMo leans toward multilingual understanding across 11+ languages, and that positioning usually predicts which feels better on your codebase.

Which is cheaper, Llama 4 Scout or Mistral NeMo?

Llama 4 Scout is cheaper — Open weight (self-host / free) vs $0.02/$0.03 per 1M tokens.

Which has the bigger context window?

Llama 4 Scout — 10M vs 128K, about 76× larger. Useful only if the model actually reasons over the full window, which not all do.

Can I use both Llama 4 Scout and Mistral NeMo together?

Yes — a multi-model platform like LumiChats gives you Llama 4 Scout, Mistral NeMo 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 Scout or Mistral NeMo?

Llama 4 Scout — released April 2025, about 9 months after Mistral NeMo.

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.