Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Mistral Large 2

Direct comparison between meta and mistral for chat models. Specs, prices, strengths, weaknesses — decide on facts.

At a glance

  • · Cheaper: Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
  • · Llama 3.3 70B Instruct: Open weights available — no vendor lock-in
  • · Mistral Large 2: EU-hosted — GDPR-friendly without US data export

Spec comparison

SpecLlama 3.3 70B InstructMistral Large 2
Providermetamistral
Input per 1M tokens$0.72 / 1M$2.00 / 1M
Output per 1M tokens$0.72 / 1M$6.00 / 1M
Context window128,000 tok128,000 tok
Max output4,096 tok8,192 tok
Knowledge cutoff2023-12
Tool calling
JSON mode
Structured output

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct — strengths

  • +Open weights available — no vendor lock-in
  • +Very cheap per token, widely available across providers
  • +Solid all-rounder for classification and simple generation

Mistral Large 2 — strengths

  • +EU-hosted — GDPR-friendly without US data export
  • +Strong on European languages (DE, FR, IT, ES)
  • +Solid tool calling and JSON mode

Llama 3.3 70B Instruct — weaknesses

  • Knowledge cutoff December 2023 — outdated on recent facts
  • No native vision or audio input
  • Behind Claude Sonnet and GPT-5 across nearly all benchmarks

Mistral Large 2 — weaknesses

  • Code quality behind Sonnet 4.6 and GPT-5.4
  • No native vision
Details: Llama 3.3 70B InstructDetails: Mistral Large 2