Llama 3.3 70B Instruct vs Mistral Small 3
How do these models stack up? Below is an expert side-by-side comparison of specifications, context window capacity, live pricing per million tokens, and standardized benchmark scores for Llama 3.3 70B Instruct and Mistral Small 3.
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
Meta's state-of-the-art open weights model, providing enterprise-grade reasoning and logic. Exceptionally powerful for self-hosted customer support, text generation, and tooling workflows.
Mistral Small 3
Mistral Small 3 is a 24B-parameter language model optimized for low-latency performance across common AI tasks. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, it features both pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions designed...
Technical Specifications
| Specification | Llama 3.3 70B Instruct | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Mistral |
| Context Window | 131,072 tokens | 32,768 tokens |
| Agent Suitability | 83/100 | 84/100 |
| Time to First Token (TTFT) | 280 ms | 120 ms |
| Deployment Model | self hostable | managed api |
| Production Stability | stable | stable |
| API Available | Yes | Yes |
| Released Date | 2024-12-06 | 2025-01-30 |
API Pricing Comparison
Input Price per Million Tokens
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
$0.10
Mistral Small 3
$0.07
Output Price per Million Tokens
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct
$0.32
Mistral Small 3
$0.20
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Benchmark Performance Metrics
Scores show the raw performance percentages verified across key evaluation suites. Higher bars indicate superior accuracy and capability in that domain.
Llama 3.3 70B Instruct Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Stable, well-documented self-hosted option with strong community support
- ▸Outperformed by Llama 4 Maverick for agentic tool-calling workflows
Mistral Small 3 Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Fastest TTFT at lowest cost — ideal for high-volume classification
- ▸Not designed for complex reasoning — route multi-step tasks to Mistral Large 3