Mistral Large 3 vs Llama 4 Maverick: Best Open-Source LLM in 2026?
If you need open-weight models with commercial use allowed, Mistral Large 3 and Llama 4 Maverick are the two strongest options in early 2026. Both are under $1/1M blended. Both are self-hostable. The differences matter significantly depending on what you need.
Last updated: February 2026
Our Pick
Mistral Large 3
Mistral Large 3 wins on intelligence, license permissiveness, and context quality. Its Apache 2.0 license is fully unrestricted — no usage limits regardless of scale. The AA Intelligence Index score of 23 vs Llama 4 Maverick's 18 represents a real capability gap. Llama 4 Maverick wins on context window (1M vs 256K), speed (124.6 vs 56.2 t/s), and price per token ($0.44 vs $0.75/1M blended). If you need massive context or blazing API throughput, Maverick is the right call. For general open-weight deployment where output quality matters, Mistral Large 3 is the better model.
Try Mistral Large 3At a glance
| Feature | Mistral Large 3 | Llama 4 Maverick |
|---|---|---|
| Rating | 4.6 / 10 | 4.4 / 10 |
| Provider | Mistral | Meta |
| Context window | 256K tokens | 1M tokens |
| Input (per 1M tokens) | $0.5 | $0.27 |
| Output (per 1M tokens) | $1.5 | $0.85 |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Open source | Yes | Yes |
Use case breakdown
AA Index 23 vs 18 — a meaningful gap. Mistral Large 3 handles reasoning, analysis, and complex instructions more reliably.
Apache 2.0 — completely unrestricted commercial use at any scale. Llama 4 Community License has restrictions for apps over 700M monthly active users.
1M tokens (Llama 4 Maverick) vs 256K (Mistral Large 3). Nearly 4× larger — critical for long-document and large-codebase workflows.
124.6 t/s vs 56.2 t/s. Llama 4 Maverick generates output more than twice as fast, important for high-throughput applications.
$0.44/1M blended (Llama 4 Maverick) vs $0.75/1M (Mistral Large 3). Maverick is 40% cheaper per token.
Mistral models are trained heavily on European language data and outperform on French, German, Spanish, and Italian tasks.
FAQ
Which is better for self-hosting, Mistral Large 3 or Llama 4 Maverick?
Depends on your hardware. Mistral Large 3 is 675B total parameters (41B active via MoE) under Apache 2.0. Llama 4 Maverick is 402B total (17B active). Both require significant multi-GPU infrastructure for full deployment; quantized versions exist for smaller setups. Mistral's Apache 2.0 license is more permissive for commercial use.
Is Llama 4 Maverick free?
The weights are free to download (Llama 4 Community License allows commercial use with caveats). API access via providers like Together AI, Groq, and OpenRouter costs $0.27–0.31/1M input tokens. Compute always costs money — open weights means no license fee, not no cost.
Does Mistral Large 3 have a consumer product?
Yes — chat.mistral.ai (Le Chat) has a free tier with daily limits and a Pro plan at $15/month. The consumer product is less polished than ChatGPT or Gemini but functional for evaluating the model.
Which supports images?
Both. Mistral Large 3 and Llama 4 Maverick both accept text and image inputs. Neither handles video or audio.