Command A Pro vs Mistral Large 3 Instruct: which model should you choose?
We compared Command A Pro and Mistral Large 3 Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Command A Pro has the stronger average benchmark score; Mistral Large 3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
Command A Pro
Command A Pro is a multimodal model from Cohere. It offers a 200,000-token context window, costs $14.28 per million input tokens and $68.05 per million output tokens, and averages 81.3 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.28 / 1M
- Output
- $68.05 / 1M
- Context
- 200,000
- Avg score
- 81.3
- Open weights
- No
Mistral Large 3 Instruct
Mistral Large 3 Instruct is a multimodal model from Mistral AI. It offers a 400,000-token context window, costs $5.31 per million input tokens and $22.47 per million output tokens, and averages 81.1 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $5.31 / 1M
- Output
- $22.47 / 1M
- Context
- 400,000
- Avg score
- 81.1
- Open weights
- Yes
Specification comparison
| Spec | Command A Pro | Mistral Large 3 Instruct | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.28 | $5.31 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $68.05 | $22.47 | B |
| Context window | 200,000 | 400,000 | B |
| Max output | 16,384 | 65,536 | B |
| Average score | 81.3 | 81.1 | A |
| Arena Elo | 1434.6 | 1446.2 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
Command A Pro wins 5, Mistral Large 3 Instruct wins 7, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | Command A Pro | Mistral Large 3 Instruct | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 81.3 | 82.3 | 1.0 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| GPQA Diamond | 79.1 | 79.8 | 0.7 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| SWE-bench Verified | 71.2 | 71.9 | 0.7 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| HumanEval | 87.5 | 84.2 | 3.3 | Command A Pro |
| MATH-500 | 83.1 | 83.4 | 0.3 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| AIME 2025 | 78.2 | 76.2 | 2.0 | Command A Pro |
| LiveCodeBench | 74.0 | 75.1 | 1.1 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| IFEval | 89.0 | 87.6 | 1.4 | Command A Pro |
| TruthfulQA | 83.3 | 85.5 | 2.2 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| HellaSwag | 90.1 | 89.1 | 1.0 | Command A Pro |
| MMMU | 77.2 | 76.5 | 0.7 | Command A Pro |
| Arena Elo | 1434.6 | 1446.2 | 11.6 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, Command A Pro costs about $27.72 per million tokens and Mistral Large 3 Instruct costs about $9.60. Mistral Large 3 Instruct is roughly 65% cheaper than Command A Pro. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
Mistral Large 3 Instruct has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens, compared with 200,000 for Command A Pro. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, Command A Pro wins 5, Mistral Large 3 Instruct wins 7, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Command A Pro leads Mistral Large 3 Instruct by 0.2 points (81.3 versus 81.1).
The price picture favours Mistral Large 3 Instruct. The context picture favours Mistral Large 3 Instruct. Those two dimensions often matter more than a few benchmark points once a model is good enough for the task.
If you need a single default, start with Command A Pro for quality-sensitive work and Mistral Large 3 Instruct for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.
Choose Command A Pro if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
Choose Mistral Large 3 Instruct if
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 400,000-token context window.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is Command A Pro better than Mistral Large 3 Instruct?
On the index average, Command A Pro leads Mistral Large 3 Instruct by 0.2 points (81.3 versus 81.1). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. Command A Pro wins 5 benchmarks, Mistral Large 3 Instruct wins 7.
Which is cheaper, Command A Pro or Mistral Large 3 Instruct?
Mistral Large 3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis at about $9.60 per million tokens, versus $27.72 for Command A Pro.
Which has the larger context window?
Mistral Large 3 Instruct has the larger context window at 400,000 tokens. Command A Pro has 200,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
Command A Pro is proprietary; Mistral Large 3 Instruct is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Command A Pro for quality-sensitive work and Mistral Large 3 Instruct for high-volume, well-scoped tasks. Run both on a sample of your own traffic before locking in a choice.