Mistral AI API Pricing 2026 — Live Rates and Shieldstral

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How much does Mistral AI cost? The table below renders the current per-token rates from our daily canonical dataset. Shieldstral 1.0 is different: Mistral released downloadable Apache-2.0 weights but did not publish a hosted Shieldstral API SKU or token rate, so we do not fabricate a zero-dollar API row.

How much does each Mistral model cost per million tokens?

Showing 3 current models. .
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Showing 3 grouped models from 3 offers · USD per 1M tokens
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August 4 launch

Shieldstral 1.0: open weights, no hosted rate

Shieldstral is a 3.8B-parameter, policy-adaptive moderation model for text and images. Mistral says it fits on one 16GB GPU in BF16 and recommends staying within its 32K-token training range. The weights carry an Apache 2.0 license, but production inference still has infrastructure and operations costs.

Read the Shieldstral pricing and deployment analysis for benchmark caveats, the Labs availability blocker, and a buyer checklist.

Key facts about Mistral AI pricing

  • Ministral 3B: $0.1 input / $0.1 output per 1M tokens in the current canonical dataset.
  • Ministral 8B: $0.15 input / $0.15 output per 1M tokens in the current canonical dataset.
  • Mistral Small 4: $0.15 input / $0.6 output per 1M tokens in the current canonical dataset.
  • Shieldstral 1.0 is open-weight and self-deployable; it is not listed as a priced hosted Shieldstral API SKU.
  • Open-weight licensing removes a separate weight-license charge, not GPU, storage, scaling, monitoring, or engineering costs.

Why choose Mistral over OpenAI or Anthropic?

Mistral's positioning comes down to European deployment options, open-weight availability, and a compact active API catalog. The daily-synced table is the reliable place to compare unit rates; use the calculator to measure your actual input/output mix rather than carrying an old launch price into a budget.

Shieldstral strengthens the openness case for moderation workloads. Teams can inspect and self-host the checkpoint, but they should compare end-to-end moderation cost, latency, false-positive review, and maintenance against a managed classifier before moving production traffic.

When Mistral is not the right choice

A managed provider can be simpler when your priority is a predictable invoice, first-party service-level commitments, or minimal model operations. Compare the live OpenAI and Anthropic rates, then test cost per accepted task or correctly moderated item under the same workload.

Price History

Only models with a recorded price change are charted here.

Ministral 3B

Ministral 8B

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Small 4

Price history tracking started April 2026. Flat model charts stay hidden until a price change is detected.
View pricing changelog →

Frequently asked questions

How much does Mistral AI charge per token?

Current active Mistral rates in our 2026-08-31 dataset are: Ministral 3B $0.1 input / $0.1 output; Ministral 8B $0.15 input / $0.15 output; Mistral Small 4 $0.15 input / $0.6 output. Rates are USD per 1 million tokens and are synced from Mistral's official API pricing page.

How much does Shieldstral cost?

Mistral released Shieldstral 1.0 as Apache-2.0 open weights without publishing a hosted Shieldstral API model ID or per-token rate. Downloading the weights has no separate license fee, but self-hosting still incurs GPU, storage, scaling, observability, and engineering costs.

Is Shieldstral available through the Mistral API?

Not as a priced hosted SKU at launch. The official release and model card point to downloadable weights and local deployment, while Mistral's API rate card does not list Shieldstral. Do not treat the separate Mistral Moderation classifier service as a Shieldstral endpoint.

Which active Mistral model is cheapest?

Ministral 3B has the lowest active input rate in today's dataset at $0.1 per 1 million input tokens. Use the live table because Mistral changes its active catalog over time.

What hardware does Shieldstral need?

Mistral says the 3.8B-parameter checkpoint fits on one 16GB GPU in BF16. The model card recommends a maximum model length of 32,768 tokens for deployment because that is the training range, even though the architecture theoretically supports more.

How should buyers compare Shieldstral with a moderation API?

Measure cost per correctly moderated item, including GPU-hours, autoscaling headroom, image preprocessing, false-positive review, false-negative risk, monitoring, and model maintenance. A free-to-download checkpoint is not the same as zero-cost production moderation.

Methodology

Hosted API pricing sourced from Mistral's official API pricing page on . Shieldstral availability is checked against Mistral's official launch, model documentation, and API rate card. All token prices are USD per 1 million tokens; no Shieldstral API price is inferred from the open-weight release.

Compare Mistral to other providers

View All Models OpenAI Pricing Anthropic Pricing Groq Pricing Token Calculator

Further reading: Full AI API pricing comparison · Cheapest AI APIs in 2026.