Pixtral Large vs Pixtral 12B
Benchmarks, API Token Pricing, Context Window & Speed Comparison
Related topics (12)
Pixtral Large by Mistral AI and Pixtral 12B 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, Pixtral 12B holds a notable pricing advantage for token ingestion. On output generation, Pixtral 12B is more economical per million generated tokens. In data-heavy architectures requiring extensive repository or document analysis, both models provide an identical memory horizon with 128K tokens. In latency-sensitive production environments, Pixtral 12B 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.
Switch & Compare Any Models
Select any AI models from our verified benchmark database to generate live side-by-side matrices.
Pixtral Large
Large VLMFrontier 124B parameter multimodal model built on Mistral Large 2, engineered for dense document analysis, visual math, and agentic workflows.
$2.00 / 1M
$6.00 / 1M
128K tokens
38.5%
Pixtral 12B
Open VLMMistral's premier open 12-billion parameter multimodal model natively trained on text and images with arbitrary aspect ratio vision encoding.
$0.15 / 1M
$0.15 / 1M
128K tokens
28%
Key Differences at a Glance
- Pixtral 12B is 22.8x cheaper for API usage (input + output tokens combined).
- Pixtral 12B is faster at 85 tok/s vs 70 tok/s.
- Pixtral Large leads on SWE-bench coding (38.5% vs 28.0%).
| Feature | Pixtral Large | Pixtral 12B |
|---|---|---|
Intelligence Index Composite reasoning & knowledge score (0-100) | 48 | 40 |
Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
Input Price Cost per million input tokens | $2.00 / 1M | $0.15 / 1M |
Output Price Cost per million output tokens | $6.00 / 1M | $0.15 / 1M |
Blended Price Weighted 7:2:1 cache:input:output per 1M | $1.70 / 1M | $0.08 / 1M |
Context Window Maximum input + output tokens | 128K tokens~192 A4 pages of text | 128K tokens~192 A4 pages of text |
Max Output Tokens Per single request | 8K | 8K |
Throughput Speed Tokens generated per second | 70 tok/s | 85 tok/s |
SWE-bench Verified Real-world software engineering | 38.5% | 28% |
GPQA Diamond Graduate-level reasoning | 55.4% | 43.8% |
Cached Input Price Prompt caching discount per 1M tokens | $1.00 / 1M | $0.05 / 1M |
Who Wins Where?
At-a-glance decision frameworkEmpirical Head-to-Head Benchmark Scores
Official evaluation metrics verified by independent third-party research labs.
Industry benchmark evaluating real-world GitHub issue resolution and multi-file debugging.
Challenging questions created by domain experts to test complex PhD-level reasoning.
Hardened reasoning and academic knowledge benchmark with reduced lucky-guess probability.
Crowdsourced human preference evaluation based on blind, head-to-head model battles.
Autonomous multi-step tasks executed inside a real command-line terminal environment.
American Invitational Mathematics Examination — multi-step Olympiad-level reasoning.
Accuracy when reasoning over very large inputs that fill the model context window.
Tokens emitted per second during active generation streaming.
Latency & Response Time
Time to first token (TTFT) and estimated end-to-end response time for a typical 500-token response.
Real-Time Interactive Token Cost Simulator
Adjust sliders to calculate projected monthly cloud API spending with prompt caching discounts.
Pixtral Large · Strengths & Key Advantages
- World-class visual document reasoning matching proprietary multimodal leaders
- Seamless parsing of high-resolution diagrams, complex financial spreadsheets, and schematics
- 128K context window with open-weights availability
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Substantial compute requirements for local cluster hosting (124B weights)
- Higher API token pricing than lightweight Pixtral 12B
Pixtral 12B · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Native image comprehension supporting multiple images and arbitrary aspect ratios
- Open weights under Apache 2.0 license for unrestricted local hosting
- Strong visual document OCR, chart parsing, and diagram understanding
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Smaller capacity limits complex multi-step reasoning on dense schematics
- Video and audio modalities not supported
Token Use & Task Economics
Estimated cost and token consumption to complete one representative agentic task.
| Metric | Pixtral Large | Pixtral 12B |
|---|---|---|
Cost per Task Estimated USD to finish one task | $0.65 | $0.09 |
Output Tokens / Task Tokens generated per task | 35K | 25K |
Reasoning Tokens / Task Thinking tokens burned per task | 0K | 0K |
Technical Specifications
Architecture, release timeline, capabilities, and modalities.
| Feature | Pixtral Large | Pixtral 12B |
|---|---|---|
| Official API Model ID (SDK) | pixtral-large-latest | pixtral-12b-latest |
| API Protocol | OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI | OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI |
| Release Date | 2024-11 | 2024-09 |
| Knowledge Cutoff | October 2024 | August 2024 |
| Architecture | Frontier Vision-Language Transformer | Multimodal Vision-Language Transformer |
| Parameters | 124B | 12B |
| Enterprise Rate Limits (RPM / TPM) | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud |
| Long-Context Tier (>128K/200K) | Flat rate ($2/1M in) across full 128K window | Flat rate ($0.15/1M in) across full 128K window |
| Prompt Cache Policy & TTL | Cached input at $1/1M tokens | Cached input at $0.05/1M tokens |
| Computer Use / GUI Agent | API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop) | API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop) |
| MCP & Parallel Tool Calling | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema |
| Web Search Grounding & Sandbox | Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools | Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools |
| Official Fine-Tuning Support | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) |
| Multimodal Token Billing | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) · Vision (~258–765 tokens per image tile) |
| Quantization & Min GPU VRAM | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 77 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 267 GB VRAM (Native BF16) | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 7 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 26 GB VRAM (Native BF16) |
| Safety & Frontier Classification | Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma) | Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma) |
| Enterprise Compliance (ZDR/HIPAA/SOC2) | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control |
| Input Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
| Output Modalities | text | text |
Pixtral Large vs Pixtral 12B: Quick Answers
Which is more intelligent, Pixtral Large or Pixtral 12B?
Pixtral Large is more intelligent. It scores 48 compared with 40 on the composite Intelligence Index.
Which model is faster?
Pixtral 12B is faster, generating 85 tokens per second compared with 70 tokens per second.
Which model is cheaper to run?
Pixtral 12B is cheaper at $0.08 per 1M tokens blended, compared with $1.70 (7:2:1 cache:input:output ratio).
Which model has lower latency?
Pixtral 12B has lower latency, with a time to first token of 0.45s compared with 0.55s.
Verdict
Verdict & Model Selection Recommendation: Choose Pixtral Large if your priority is Enterprise document understanding, financial visual audit, and sovereign multimodal automation. Its performance in demanding tasks justifies its operational token cost. Choose Pixtral 12B if your workflow prioritizes Document OCR, visual inspection agents, and open multimodal pipelines. For large-scale batch processing or customer-facing conversational interfaces, its balance of speed and economics delivers superior ROI.
Frequently asked questions
How does Pixtral Large compare to Pixtral 12B in API token pricing and cost per token?+
Pixtral Large costs $2.00 per 1M input tokens and $6.00 per 1M output tokens, whereas Pixtral 12B costs $0.15 input and $0.15 output. Overall, Pixtral 12B 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: Pixtral Large or Pixtral 12B?+
Both Pixtral Large and Pixtral 12B offer an identical context window of 128K tokens (~96k words). Both architectures provide equal capacity for large document ingestion, multi-file codebases, and extended multi-turn conversation histories.
Which AI model is better for software engineering and coding: Pixtral Large or Pixtral 12B?+
Pixtral Large scores 38.5% on SWE-bench Verified while Pixtral 12B scores 28%. For autonomous software engineering and multi-file debugging, Pixtral Large holds the verified benchmark lead.
What is the difference in reasoning capability and extended thinking between Pixtral Large and Pixtral 12B?+
Pixtral Large is optimized for low-latency direct generation. In contrast, Pixtral 12B focuses on standard fast inference.
How does inference speed (tokens per second) compare between Pixtral Large and Pixtral 12B?+
Pixtral Large generates approximately 70 tokens per second, while Pixtral 12B delivers 85 tokens per second. In latency-sensitive production environments, Pixtral 12B provides faster time-to-first-token (TTFT) and higher streaming response velocity.
Can you implement a tiered LLM routing setup combining Pixtral Large and Pixtral 12B to optimize costs?+
Yes! High-efficiency architectures route high-frequency routine classification and conversational tasks to Pixtral 12B to save operational costs, and dynamically escalate complex architectural queries or reasoning tasks to Pixtral Large. This tiered routing pattern cuts overall API bills by up to 70%.
Understand key metrics like context window, token pricing, reasoning mode, and SWE-bench scores in our comprehensive AI glossary.
Related reading
- Pixtral 12B vs Mistral Large 2: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed ComparisonCompare
- Pixtral 12B vs Qwen 2.5 32B Instruct: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed ComparisonCompare
- Pixtral Large vs Aya Expanse 32B: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed ComparisonCompare
- Aion-3.0 vs Aion-Mini: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed ComparisonCompare
- Aion-3.0 vs Gemini 3.6 Flash: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed ComparisonCompare
- Aion-Mini vs Laguna XS 2.1: Benchmarks, Pricing & Speed ComparisonCompare
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