Cohere Command A vs Mistral Large
Mistral Large is cheaper for every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Specifications and rates
| Property | Cohere Command A | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| Input per 1M | $2.50 | $2.00 |
| Output per 1M | $10.00 | $6.00 |
| Cached input per 1M | — | — |
| Blended (3:1) | $4.38 | $3.00 |
| Context window | 256K | 131K |
| Max output | — | — |
| Inputs accepted | text | text |
Source: Cohere pricing (May 2026) · Mistral AI pricing (May 2026). Published list prices only — committed-use discounts, regional variation, and per-request charges are not included. Not yet independently re-checked against the vendor’s page.
Monthly cost by workload
Identical token volumes through both rate cards. Output-heavy profiles are where the ranking flips.
| Workload | Cohere Command A | Mistral Large | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-app chat assistantA support or help assistant handling a few thousand conversations a month, with short prompts and short answers. | $100 | $70 | Mistral Largesaves $30/mo (30%) |
| RAG over documentsRetrieval-augmented answering where each request stuffs several retrieved passages into the prompt, so input dominates. | $900 | $690 | Mistral Largesaves $210/mo (23%) |
| Coding agentAn agentic loop that reads files and writes patches, generating heavy output and re-sending large context on every turn. | $2,000 | $1,400 | Mistral Largesaves $600/mo (30%) |
What each one is for
Cohere Command A
by Cohere
Cohere's enterprise flagship, built around retrieval-augmented generation and multilingual work, and sold heavily as a private deployment inside customer infrastructure.
Mistral Large
by Mistral AI
The French lab's flagship, priced below every US frontier model and hosted in the EU, which is often the deciding factor rather than the benchmark scores.
Common questions
- Is Cohere Command A or Mistral Large cheaper in 2026?
- Mistral Large, for every workload modelled here. On a blended 3:1 basis it costs $3.00 per million tokens against Cohere Command A's $4.38.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Cohere Command A, at 256K tokens against 131K. A larger window only helps if you can afford to fill it — the cost of one full-context request is in the table above.
- Which is cheaper for output-heavy work like agents?
- Mistral Large, at $6.00 per million output tokens against $10.00. Reasoning tokens bill as output, so for agentic loops this axis usually decides the invoice regardless of what the input rates look like.
- What is not included in these figures?
- Batch-processing discounts, fine-tuning, long-context surcharges above a provider's standard tier, and any enterprise agreement. These are published pay-as-you-go list prices, checked against each provider's own pricing page on the date shown.
- Is switching from Cohere Command A to Mistral Large worth it?
- On price alone it is about 31% cheaper on a blended basis. Whether that survives contact with your workload depends on output quality and on retry rate — a cheaper model that needs two attempts is not cheaper. Model the specific volumes in the calculator before you migrate.