Cohere Command R vs Mistral Small
Mistral Small is cheaper for every workload modelled here.
List prices checked
Specifications and rates
| Property | Cohere Command R | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Input per 1M | $0.150 | $0.100 |
| Output per 1M | $0.600 | $0.300 |
| Cached input per 1M | — | — |
| Blended (3:1) | $0.262 | $0.150 |
| Context window | 128K | 131K |
| Max output | — | — |
| Inputs accepted | text | text, image |
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 R | Mistral Small | Cheaper |
|---|---|---|---|
| In-app chat assistantA support or help assistant handling a few thousand conversations a month, with short prompts and short answers. | $6.00 | $3.50 | Mistral Smallsaves $2.50/mo (42%) |
| RAG over documentsRetrieval-augmented answering where each request stuffs several retrieved passages into the prompt, so input dominates. | $54 | $35 | Mistral Smallsaves $20/mo (36%) |
| Coding agentAn agentic loop that reads files and writes patches, generating heavy output and re-sending large context on every turn. | $120 | $70 | Mistral Smallsaves $50/mo (42%) |
What each one is for
Cohere Command R
by Cohere
The cheap end of Cohere's range, aimed at retrieval pipelines where the model's job is to ground an answer in supplied documents rather than to reason from scratch.
Mistral Small
by Mistral AI
An open-weight model available both as a hosted API and as a download, which makes it the cheap tier you can also run yourself if the economics change.
Common questions
- Is Cohere Command R or Mistral Small cheaper in 2026?
- Mistral Small, for every workload modelled here. On a blended 3:1 basis it costs $0.150 per million tokens against Cohere Command R's $0.262.
- Which has the larger context window?
- Mistral Small, at 131K tokens against 128K. 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 Small, at $0.300 per million output tokens against $0.600. 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 R to Mistral Small worth it?
- On price alone it is about 43% 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.