Head-to-Head Model Comparison

GPT-5.1 Codex Max vs Devstral 2

Benchmarks, API Token Pricing, Context Window & Speed Comparison

Reviewed by the GetInfoUs research teamLast reviewed: October 2026Editorial policy
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AI CompareAI BenchmarkToken PricingModel CostModel SpecsSWE-bench CodingModel VersusWhich AI ModelLLM Speed & LatencyReasoning ModelsExtended ThinkingPrompt Caching ROI
GPT-5.1 Codex Max vs Devstral 2: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed Comparison

GPT-5.1 Codex Max by OpenAI and Devstral 2 by Mistral AI represent two of the frontier AI models analyzed in our comprehensive 2026 AI benchmark and LLM comparison. In this head-to-head evaluation, we examine API token pricing, context window specifications, inference speed (tokens per second), and empirical reasoning performance. From a pure economic perspective, Devstral 2 holds a notable pricing advantage for token ingestion. On output generation, Devstral 2 is more economical per million generated tokens. In data-heavy architectures requiring extensive repository or document analysis, GPT-5.1 Codex Max provides an expanded memory horizon with 400K tokens. In latency-sensitive production environments, GPT-5.1 Codex Max leads in tokens-per-second throughput, making it ideal for real-time conversational agents and high-concurrency workflows. Below is the complete empirical head-to-head breakdown across cost, speed, context, and capability matrices.

Head-to-Head Comparison

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GPT-5.1 Codex Max

Max Codex

The highest-capability Codex tier, built for large repositories and long agentic runs.

Intelligence Index62 / 100
Input Token:

$1.75 / 1M

Output Token:

$14.00 / 1M

Context Window:

400K tokens

SWE-bench Verified:

78.2%

Mistral AI

Devstral 2

Code Agent v2

Second-generation open software engineering agent featuring 262K context, deep terminal agent capabilities, and hardened patch generation.

Intelligence Index56 / 100
Input Token:

$1.50 / 1M

Output Token:

$4.50 / 1M

Context Window:

262.1K tokens

SWE-bench Verified:

58.2%

Key Differences at a Glance

  • Devstral 2 is 2.3x cheaper for API usage (input + output tokens combined).
  • GPT-5.1 Codex Max has a larger context window (400K vs 262K tokens).
  • GPT-5.1 Codex Max is faster at 95 tok/s vs 70 tok/s.
  • GPT-5.1 Codex Max leads on SWE-bench coding (78.2% vs 58.2%).
Need definitions for token pricing, context, or benchmarks?Explore AI Glossary →
FeatureGPT-5.1 Codex MaxDevstral 2
Intelligence Index
Composite reasoning & knowledge score (0-100)
6256
Provider
OpenAIMistral AI
Input Price
Cost per million input tokens
$1.75 / 1M$1.50 / 1M
Output Price
Cost per million output tokens
$14.00 / 1M$4.50 / 1M
Blended Price
Weighted 7:2:1 cache:input:output per 1M
$1.87 / 1M$0.99 / 1M
Context Window
Maximum input + output tokens
400K tokens~600 A4 pages of text262.1K tokens~393 A4 pages of text
Max Output Tokens
Per single request
128K66K
Throughput Speed
Tokens generated per second
95 tok/s70 tok/s
SWE-bench Verified
Real-world software engineering
78.2%58.2%
GPQA Diamond
Graduate-level reasoning
80%66.5%
Cached Input Price
Prompt caching discount per 1M tokens
$0.17 / 1M$0.35 / 1M

Who Wins Where?

At-a-glance decision framework
Coding
GPT-5.1 Codex Max
+20.0% SWE-bench lead
Cost
Devstral 2
2.3x cheaper monthly runtime
Speed
GPT-5.1 Codex Max
+36% faster generation
Context
GPT-5.1 Codex Max
400K tokens window

Empirical Head-to-Head Benchmark Scores

Official evaluation metrics verified by independent third-party research labs.

GPT-5.1 Codex MaxDevstral 2
SWE-bench Verified (Autonomous Coding)

Industry benchmark evaluating real-world GitHub issue resolution and multi-file debugging.

78.2%vs58.2%
GPQA Diamond (Doctorate-Level Science & Math)

Challenging questions created by domain experts to test complex PhD-level reasoning.

80%vs66.5%
MMLU-Pro (Multi-task Language Understanding)

Hardened reasoning and academic knowledge benchmark with reduced lucky-guess probability.

87.2%vs83.5%
LMSYS Chatbot Arena Elo

Crowdsourced human preference evaluation based on blind, head-to-head model battles.

1378ptsvs1365pts
Humanity's Last Exam (Frontier Expert Knowledge)

Extremely difficult, closed-ended questions spanning the frontier of human expert knowledge.

13.2%vsN/A
Terminal-Bench (Agentic Coding & Terminal Use)

Autonomous multi-step tasks executed inside a real command-line terminal environment.

54.5%vs52%
SciCode (Scientific Computing)

Research-grade coding problems drawn from real scientific and numerical workloads.

48.5%vsN/A
LiveCodeBench (Competitive Coding)

Contamination-free competitive programming problems collected continuously over time.

75.5%vsN/A
AIME (Advanced Math Competition)

American Invitational Mathematics Examination — multi-step Olympiad-level reasoning.

92.6%vs78%
Long-Context Reasoning

Accuracy when reasoning over very large inputs that fill the model context window.

80%vs82%
Generation Speed (Throughput)

Tokens emitted per second during active generation streaming.

95 tok/s vs70 tok/s

Latency & Response Time

Time to first token (TTFT) and estimated end-to-end response time for a typical 500-token response.

Time to First Token (TTFT)Lower is better
GPT-5.1 Codex Max1.70s
Devstral 20.52s
Est. End-to-End Response (500 tokens)TTFT + generation time
GPT-5.1 Codex Max6.96s
Devstral 27.66s

Real-Time Interactive Token Cost Simulator

Adjust sliders to calculate projected monthly cloud API spending with prompt caching discounts.

100K / day
10K500K1M
30K / day
5K150K300K
50% cached
0% (Cold)50%90% (Warm)
GPT-5.1 Codex Max Monthly API Bill
$15.49 / month
$1.75/1M in · $14/1M out
Devstral 2 Monthly API Bill
$6.82 / month
$1.5/1M in · $4.5/1M out
Devstral 2 saves approximately $8.66 / month (56%) under this workload.2.3x Savings

GPT-5.1 Codex Max · Strengths & Key Advantages

  • Top capability on large, complex codebases
  • Sustains very long autonomous coding sessions
  • Best first-pass accuracy in the Codex line
  • Handles monorepos with thousands of files
Considerations & Trade-offs
  • Most expensive Codex tier
  • Unnecessary for small repositories or simple edits

Devstral 2 · Strengths & Key Advantages

  • Expanded 262K context window to ingest entire multi-package monorepos
  • State-of-the-art 58.2% SWE-bench score for an open-weights model
  • Hardened against regression loops and terminal syntax hallucination
Considerations & Trade-offs
  • Substantial 123B parameter memory requirement for local execution
  • API token costs are moderately high for intensive multi-turn loops

Token Use & Task Economics

Estimated cost and token consumption to complete one representative agentic task.

MetricGPT-5.1 Codex MaxDevstral 2
Cost per Task
Estimated USD to finish one task
$2.40$0.65
Output Tokens / Task
Tokens generated per task
62K42K
Reasoning Tokens / Task
Thinking tokens burned per task
36K20K

Technical Specifications

Architecture, release timeline, capabilities, and modalities.

FeatureGPT-5.1 Codex MaxDevstral 2
Official API Model ID (SDK)gpt-5-1-codex-maxdevstral-2-latest
API ProtocolOpenAI Responses API & Chat Completions v1OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI
Release Date2025-112025-12
Knowledge CutoffOctober 2024October 2025
ArchitectureMaximum-capability code-specialised reasoning modelAdvanced Agentic Code Transformer
ParametersConfidential123B
Enterprise Rate Limits (RPM / TPM)10,000 – 30,000 RPM (Tier 5 Enterprise) · 800,000 – 2,000,000 TPMUnlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud
Long-Context Tier (>128K/200K)Flat rate ($1.75/1M in) across full 400K windowFlat rate ($1.5/1M in) across full 262K window
Prompt Cache Policy & TTLAutomatic prefix caching at $0.175/1M (no extra cache-write fee)Cached input at $0.35/1M tokens
Computer Use / GUI AgentSupported (Screen coordinate grounding, browser & desktop GUI action loops)API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop)
MCP & Parallel Tool CallingNative MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON SchemaNative MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema
Web Search Grounding & SandboxNative Web Search tool + Hosted Code Interpreter & File Search RAGSupported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools
Official Fine-Tuning SupportSupervised Fine-Tuning (SFT), Direct Preference (DPO) & Reinforcement Fine-Tuning (RFT)Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory)
Multimodal Token BillingText BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile)Text BPE (~4 chars/token)
Quantization & Min GPU VRAMCloud-Hosted Proprietary (FP8 / BF16 Tensor Core Cluster) · Zero Local VRAM Required (100% Serverless Cloud API)BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 76 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 264 GB VRAM (Native BF16)
Safety & Frontier ClassificationOpenAI Preparedness Framework Audited & System Card PublishedOpen-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma)
Enterprise Compliance (ZDR/HIPAA/SOC2)SOC2 Type II · GDPR · Zero Data Retention (ZDR) & HIPAA BAA Available on Enterprise Tier100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control
Input Modalitiestext, visiontext
Output Modalitiestexttext

GPT-5.1 Codex Max vs Devstral 2: Quick Answers

Which is more intelligent, GPT-5.1 Codex Max or Devstral 2?

GPT-5.1 Codex Max is more intelligent. It scores 62 compared with 56 on the composite Intelligence Index.

Which model is faster?

GPT-5.1 Codex Max is faster, generating 95 tokens per second compared with 70 tokens per second.

Which model is cheaper to run?

Devstral 2 is cheaper at $0.99 per 1M tokens blended, compared with $1.87 (7:2:1 cache:input:output ratio).

Which model has lower latency?

Devstral 2 has lower latency, with a time to first token of 0.52s compared with 1.70s.

Which model has a larger context window?

GPT-5.1 Codex Max has a larger context window, supporting 400K tokens compared with 262.1K tokens.

Verdict

Verdict & Model Selection Recommendation: Choose GPT-5.1 Codex Max if your priority is Enterprise-scale code agents and monorepo work. Its performance in demanding tasks justifies its operational token cost. Choose Devstral 2 if your workflow prioritizes Whole-repository migrations, autonomous developer agents, and complex architecture refactors. For large-scale batch processing or customer-facing conversational interfaces, its balance of speed and economics delivers superior ROI.

Frequently asked questions

How does GPT-5.1 Codex Max compare to Devstral 2 in API token pricing and cost per token?+

GPT-5.1 Codex Max costs $1.75 per 1M input tokens and $14.00 per 1M output tokens, whereas Devstral 2 costs $1.50 input and $4.50 output. Overall, Devstral 2 is the more cost-effective model for high-volume API pipelines. Both models support prompt caching discounts of up to 90% for repeated prompt prefixes.

Which model has a larger context window: GPT-5.1 Codex Max or Devstral 2?+

GPT-5.1 Codex Max supports a context window of 400K tokens (~300k words), while Devstral 2 supports 262K tokens (~197k words). Therefore, GPT-5.1 Codex Max can process more textual data and document context in a single prompt.

Which AI model is better for software engineering and coding: GPT-5.1 Codex Max or Devstral 2?+

GPT-5.1 Codex Max scores 78.2% on SWE-bench Verified while Devstral 2 scores 58.2%. For autonomous software engineering and multi-file debugging, GPT-5.1 Codex Max holds the verified benchmark lead.

What is the difference in reasoning capability and extended thinking between GPT-5.1 Codex Max and Devstral 2?+

GPT-5.1 Codex Max features native chain-of-thought extended thinking mode with configurable reasoning effort. In contrast, Devstral 2 provides chain-of-thought reasoning depth for complex math and science.

How does inference speed (tokens per second) compare between GPT-5.1 Codex Max and Devstral 2?+

GPT-5.1 Codex Max generates approximately 95 tokens per second, while Devstral 2 delivers 70 tokens per second. In latency-sensitive production environments, GPT-5.1 Codex Max provides faster time-to-first-token (TTFT) and higher streaming response velocity.

Can you implement a tiered LLM routing setup combining GPT-5.1 Codex Max and Devstral 2 to optimize costs?+

Yes! High-efficiency architectures route high-frequency routine classification and conversational tasks to Devstral 2 to save operational costs, and dynamically escalate complex architectural queries or reasoning tasks to GPT-5.1 Codex Max. This tiered routing pattern cuts overall API bills by up to 70%.

AI Terminology & Guide
Explore Glossary →

Understand key metrics like context window, token pricing, reasoning mode, and SWE-bench scores in our comprehensive AI glossary.

Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.

Sources: GetInfoUs Independent AI Benchmarks & Official API Specs