Model comparison
Pixtral 12B (24.09) vs Claude 3 Opus
- Input
- $0.15 / 1M tokens
- Output
- $0.15 / 1M tokens
- Context
- 128K tokens (131,072)
- Released
- 2024-09-17
- Input
- $15.00
- Output
- $75.00
- Context
- 200K
- Released
- 2024-03-04
Claude 3 Opus scores higher on 4 of the 4 benchmarks both models report; Pixtral 12B (24.09) is cheaper on input tokens ($0.2 vs $15 per 1M, 100×); Claude 3 Opus has the larger context window (200K vs 128K); Pixtral 12B (24.09) ships open weights while Claude 3 Opus is API-only.
Specs and pricing side by side
| Spec | Pixtral 12B (24.09) | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral AI | Anthropic |
| Released | 2024-09-17 | 2024-03-04 |
| Context window | 128K tokens (131,072) | 200K |
| Max output | Not separately published by Mistral | 4K |
| Input price | $0.15 / 1M tokens | $15.00 |
| Output price | $0.15 / 1M tokens | $75.00 |
| Parameters | ~12B decoder + ~400M vision encoder (~12.4B total) | Undisclosed |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Proprietary |
| Weights | Open weights | API only |
| Modalities | text, image | Text, Vision |
| Knowledge cutoff | Not officially published by Mistral | August 2023 |
Benchmarks both models report
| Benchmark | Pixtral 12B (24.09) | Claude 3 Opus |
|---|---|---|
| MMMU | 52% | 59.4% |
| MMLU | 69.2% | 86.8% |
| HumanEval | 72% | 84.9% |
| MATH | 48.1% | 60.1% |
Scores are as published by each maker or its cited source; harness, reasoning effort and date can differ between rows, so treat small gaps as ties. Sources are listed on each model page.
Which one should you pick?
Pick Pixtral 12B (24.09) if…
- Cost matters: input tokens cost 100× less ($0.2 vs $15 per 1M).
- You want to self-host or fine-tune (open weights, Apache 2.0).
- You need text / image input, which Claude 3 Opus lacks.
- Your use case is: document and form understanding (OCR-style extraction, document QA).
Pick Claude 3 Opus if…
- You care about MMMU, MMLU, HumanEval (it scores higher on 4 shared benchmarks).
- You need the longer context (200K vs 128K).
- You need Text / Vision input, which Pixtral 12B (24.09) lacks.
- Your use case is: complex reasoning, analysis and long-document understanding over the 200K window.
FAQ
Which is better, Pixtral 12B (24.09) or Claude 3 Opus?
Claude 3 Opus scores higher on 4 of the 4 benchmarks both models report; Pixtral 12B (24.09) is cheaper on input tokens ($0.2 vs $15 per 1M, 100×); Claude 3 Opus has the larger context window (200K vs 128K); Pixtral 12B (24.09) ships open weights while Claude 3 Opus is API-only. The better pick depends on whether you value benchmark scores, price per token, context length or openness for your workload.
How much cheaper is Pixtral 12B (24.09)?
Pixtral 12B (24.09): $0.15 / 1M tokens input, $0.15 / 1M tokens output. Claude 3 Opus: $15.00 input, $75.00 output (list API prices as published by each maker).
What are the context windows of Pixtral 12B (24.09) and Claude 3 Opus?
Pixtral 12B (24.09) offers 128K tokens (131,072) with up to Not separately published by Mistral output; Claude 3 Opus offers 200K with up to 4K output.
Is Pixtral 12B (24.09) newer than Claude 3 Opus?
Pixtral 12B (24.09) was released 2024-09-17; Claude 3 Opus was released 2024-03-04.