Model comparison 2026

DeepSeek R1 (0528) vs Mistral Large 4

DeepSeek R1 (0528)
DeepSeek · Balanced · Open weights
$0.99/1M · 164K ctx
Mistral Large 4
Mistral · Balanced · Open weights
$1.10/1M · 1.0M ctx

Community vote

Pick a winner in each dimension. You can change your vote any time.

Output Quality
Correctness and depth of what it produces
Agentic Ability
Tool calls, instruction-following, and multi-step tasks
Speed
Tokens per second and time-to-first-token
Value for money
How much capability you get per dollar
Reliability
Consistent results: fewer refusals, loops and format breaks

Specs and pricing side by side

Spec
DeepSeek R1
Mistral Large 4
Maker
DeepSeek
Mistral
Blended price / 1M
$0.99
$1.10
Input / output
$0.50 in · $2.15 out / 1M tokens
$0.68 in · $2.09 out / 1M tokens
Context window
164K
1.0M
Open weights
Yes
Yes
Tool use
Yes
Yes
Reasoning
Yes
Yes
Output Quality
4.0
7.6
Agentic Ability
4.4
7.1
Speed
5.1
7.0
Value for money
4.7
5.9
Reliability
8.4
8.8

Pricing and capabilities synced from the OpenRouter catalogue. Scores are editorial (0–10).

Verdict: DeepSeek R1 or Mistral Large 4?

Updated 2026-10-13

Choose DeepSeek R1 (0528) if you want research and comparisons that need the original R1 reasoning model. Choose Mistral Large 4 if you want open-weight, EU-provenance agent work that needs long context and image input.

In our editorial scoring, Mistral Large 4 leads in 5 of five dimensions (output quality, agentic ability, speed, value for money and reliability), while DeepSeek R1 (0528) leads in 0. On price, DeepSeek R1 (0528) runs about $0.99 per 1M tokens (blended) and is open-weight; Mistral Large 4 is about $1.10 and open-weight.

Where DeepSeek R1 falls short
  • Slow (about 28 output tokens/s, per Artificial Analysis)
  • 164K context, smaller than 27.9% of the coding-agent requests we measured
Full DeepSeek R1 breakdown →
Where Mistral Large 4 falls short
  • Still a public preview, so behavior and price can change
  • 26.8% in Artificial Analysis's Terminal-Bench 4.0 run, well below the frontier models
Full Mistral Large 4 breakdown →

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