Mistral Large 3
Mistral Large 3
Europe's answer, published under Apache 2.0, with a quarter of a million tokens of context.
Updated
The read
Large 3 is a sparse model that activates a fraction of its parameters per token, which is how Mistral gets frontier-adjacent quality out of something you can actually host. The licence is Apache 2.0 with no conditions attached, the context runs to a quarter of a million tokens, and for European teams it answers the data-residency question without a legal review. It is a step behind the very top on hard reasoning.
Where it shines
- Apache 2.0 with no user, revenue or field-of-use clauses
- Sparse design keeps serving costs sane for its quality
- EU-hosted API option, which several sectors require
Worth knowing first
- Behind the leading open models from Chinese labs on benchmarks
- Latency is unremarkable for a model of its size
Index score
80.7
Provisional. This score is read from the product's public capability, not from the one-prompt rebuild the fully reviewed entries went through, so treat it as a placing rather than a verdict.
- Rank
- 40 of 73
- Builds
- LLMs
- Category
- Open weights
- Output
- Apache-licensed weights, plus a hosted API
- Pricing
- Free tier
- Best for
- European teams that need capability and data residency at once
Scores are our own editorial judgement, weighted craft 55, speed 10, control 15 and value 20.
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