Which is cheaper, GPT-5.4 mini or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Mistral Small costs $0.00158 per task against $0.01013 for GPT-5.4 mini, which makes it 6.43x cheaper (a 84% saving).

How much do GPT-5.4 mini and Mistral Small charge per million tokens?

GPT-5.4 mini: $0.75 per million input tokens and $4.5 per million output tokens. Mistral Small: $0.15 input and $0.6 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.

What does a million tasks cost on GPT-5.4 mini vs Mistral Small?

At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $10,125 on GPT-5.4 mini and $1,575 on Mistral Small. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.

Model price comparisons · August 2026

GPT-5.4 mini vs Mistral Small: API pricing compared

Same task, same tokens, two invoices. Every figure on this page is computed from our open pricing dataset, not copied from a blog post.

Mistral Small is 6.43x cheaper than GPT-5.4 mini on a realistic task profile of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens per call, 3 calls per task: $0.00158 against $0.01013 per task, a 84% saving on identical work. Run a million tasks a month and that is the difference between $1,575 and $10,125.

Model	Input $/1M tok	Output $/1M tok	Output multiple	$/task	$/1M tasks
GPT-5.4 miniOpenAI · mid	$0.75	$4.5	6x	$0.01013	$10,125
Mistral SmallMistral · value	$0.15	$0.6	4x	$0.00158	$1,575

Monthly bill at three volumes

Tasks / month	GPT-5.4 mini	Mistral Small	Gap
10,000	$101	$16	$86
100,000	$1,013	$158	$855
1,000,000	$10,125	$1,575	$8,550

Where the money goes on each

GPT-5.4 mini prices output at 6x its input rate, so on this profile output is 67% of its task cost. Mistral Small prices output at 4x input, putting output at 57% of cost. The model with the higher output multiple rewards capping response length more; the one with the higher input share rewards prompt caching and context trimming more. Cost tells you nothing about quality: run both on twenty of your real cases before deciding, and treat the cheaper model as the default until it demonstrably fails.

Break-even against a dedicated GPU

Against a $2/hour dedicated instance ($1,460/month fixed), self-hosting overtakes GPT-5.4 mini at 144,198 tasks per month and overtakes Mistral Small at 926,984 tasks per month, which exceeds the box's capacity, so it never wins. The full method is in the self-hosting break-even guide.

Pricing the self-hosted side? Compare on-demand GPU rates:

Compare GPU cloud pricing →

Plug your own token counts into the $/task calculator, or read the full ten-model pricing comparison.

Compare against other models

Frequently asked

Which is cheaper, GPT-5.4 mini or Mistral Small?: Mistral Small. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Mistral Small costs $0.00158 per task against $0.01013 for GPT-5.4 mini, which makes it 6.43x cheaper (a 84% saving).
How much do GPT-5.4 mini and Mistral Small charge per million tokens?: GPT-5.4 mini: $0.75 per million input tokens and $4.5 per million output tokens. Mistral Small: $0.15 input and $0.6 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.
What does a million tasks cost on GPT-5.4 mini vs Mistral Small?: At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $10,125 on GPT-5.4 mini and $1,575 on Mistral Small. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.