ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning vs Mistral Large 3 Instruct: which model should you choose?
We compared ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning and Mistral Large 3 Instruct on price, context window and 12 benchmarks. Mistral Large 3 Instruct has the stronger average benchmark score; Mistral Large 3 Instruct is cheaper on a blended 3:1 basis.
ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning
ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is a multimodal model from Baidu. It offers a 1,000,000-token context window, costs $14.36 per million input tokens and $78.75 per million output tokens, and averages 79.8 across the index's benchmark suite.
- Input
- $14.36 / 1M
- Output
- $78.75 / 1M
- Context
- 1,000,000
- Avg score
- 79.8
- 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 | ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning | Mistral Large 3 Instruct | Edge |
|---|---|---|---|
| Input price / 1M | $14.36 | $5.31 | B |
| Output price / 1M | $78.75 | $22.47 | B |
| Context window | 1,000,000 | 400,000 | A |
| Max output | 8,192 | 65,536 | B |
| Average score | 79.8 | 81.1 | B |
| Arena Elo | 1421.5 | 1446.2 | B |
| Open weights | No | Yes | B |
Benchmark comparison
ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning wins 3, Mistral Large 3 Instruct wins 9, and 0 benchmarks are tied. The table shows the modelled score for each model and the gap.
| Benchmark | ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning | Mistral Large 3 Instruct | Gap | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU-Pro | 80.6 | 82.3 | 1.7 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| GPQA Diamond | 75.7 | 79.8 | 4.1 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| SWE-bench Verified | 69.8 | 71.9 | 2.1 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| HumanEval | 85.0 | 84.2 | 0.8 | ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning |
| MATH-500 | 82.5 | 83.4 | 0.9 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| AIME 2025 | 78.1 | 76.2 | 1.9 | ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning |
| LiveCodeBench | 71.9 | 75.1 | 3.2 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| IFEval | 88.7 | 87.6 | 1.1 | ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning |
| TruthfulQA | 82.9 | 85.5 | 2.6 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| HellaSwag | 88.0 | 89.1 | 1.1 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| MMMU | 74.4 | 76.5 | 2.1 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
| Arena Elo | 1421.5 | 1446.2 | 24.7 | Mistral Large 3 Instruct |
Price analysis
On a blended 3:1 input-to-output basis, ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning costs about $30.46 per million tokens and Mistral Large 3 Instruct costs about $9.60. Mistral Large 3 Instruct is roughly 68% cheaper than ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning. At high volume, that gap compounds quickly, so price should carry real weight unless the quality difference is decisive.
ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens, compared with 400,000 for Mistral Large 3 Instruct. That matters for long documents, large codebases and multi-step agent traces.
Verdict
Across 12 shared benchmarks, ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning wins 3, Mistral Large 3 Instruct wins 9, and 0 are tied. On the index average, Mistral Large 3 Instruct leads ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning by 1.3 points (81.1 versus 79.8).
The price picture favours Mistral Large 3 Instruct. The context picture favours ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning. 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 Mistral Large 3 Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.
Choose ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning if
- You need the larger 1,000,000-token context window.
- The workload needs multi-step reasoning.
Choose Mistral Large 3 Instruct if
- You want the higher average benchmark score in this index.
- Unit cost matters and you want the cheaper blended price.
- You need the larger 65,536-token output limit.
- You need open weights for self-hosting or fine-tuning.
FAQ
Is ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning better than Mistral Large 3 Instruct?
On the index average, Mistral Large 3 Instruct leads ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning by 1.3 points (81.1 versus 79.8). The better choice depends on price, context and your task. ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning wins 3 benchmarks, Mistral Large 3 Instruct wins 9.
Which is cheaper, ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning 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 $30.46 for ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning.
Which has the larger context window?
ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning has the larger context window at 1,000,000 tokens. Mistral Large 3 Instruct has 400,000 tokens.
Are these models open weights?
ERNIE 4.5 Reasoning is proprietary; Mistral Large 3 Instruct is open weights.
Which should I choose for production?
If you need a single default, start with Mistral Large 3 Instruct for quality-sensitive work, and check whether its price holds at your expected volume before committing.