vs
Mistral AI vs Nebius
Two European options. Mistral sells its own open-weight models with EU or US regions; Nebius hosts 60+ third-party open models and rents GPUs from Amsterdam.
By The Subconscious Team · Updated
Mistral AI vs Nebius: key differences
Both companies are European, but they sell different things. Mistral is a model lab: Medium 3.5, a dense 128B model at $1.50 in and $7.50 out per million tokens, Small 4 at $0.15 in and $0.60 out, and Large 3 at $0.50 in and $1.50 out, all with 256K context. Nebius is an Amsterdam AI cloud whose Token Factory serves 60+ open models from Llama, Qwen, DeepSeek, GLM, Kimi and GPT-OSS, starting at $0.06 per million input tokens. Mistral's own models have left Nebius's public list, so a team that wants Medium 3.5 goes to Mistral or a hyperscaler. Nebius wins on breadth and floor price, and Artificial Analysis has measured it among the top hosts on raw throughput.
Deployment and customization split them further. Mistral runs on La Plateforme, Azure, Bedrock, Vertex AI, Snowflake and watsonx, and Medium 3.5 self-hosts on as few as four GPUs. Its fine-tuning API is deprecated, with custom training moved to Forge, an enterprise system. Nebius lets teams upload a fine-tuned checkpoint and serve it at the same token pricing on dedicated endpoints with a 99.9% SLA, and the same account rents H100s from $2.15 an hour preemptible up to GB300 racks. Both offer EU or US placement. Nebius has no free trial and a $25 minimum first payment. Pick Mistral for its own models and cloud reach, and Nebius to mix models or grow into training.
What Mistral AI and Nebius do
Mistral AI
Mistral AI is a Paris lab that sells its models through La Plateforme, its own API, and releases most of them as open weights. It consolidated the lineup in 2026. Mistral Medium 3.5, released April 28, is a dense 128B model that merges instruction following, reasoning and coding into one set of weights, and it replaced both Devstral 2 and the Magistral reasoning models. It costs $1.50 in and $7.50 out per million tokens and scores 77.6% on SWE-Bench Verified by Mistral's count. Mistral Small 4, a 119B mixture-of-experts model with 6.5B active, costs $0.15 in and $0.60 out. Mistral Large 3, a 675B MoE under Apache 2.0, runs $0.50 in and $1.50 out. All three carry a 256K context window.
Example models: Mistral Medium 3.5, Mistral Small 4
Full Mistral AI profileNebius
Nebius is an Amsterdam-headquartered AI cloud and the strongest European alternative to the US hyperscalers. It sells raw NVIDIA GPU compute, from H100s at $2.15 an hour preemptible up to GB300 NVL72 racks, and it has begun adding Vera Rubin. Hyperscale buyers back it: a Microsoft capacity deal worth about $17.4B in September 2025, then a Meta agreement worth up to about $27B in March 2026.
Example models: DeepSeek V3, GPT-OSS
Full Nebius profileShould you choose Mistral AI or Nebius?
Mistral AI
Choose Mistral AI for
- Running Medium 3.5 for agentic coding
- Buying through Azure, Bedrock or Vertex credits
- Self-hosting open weights on a few GPUs
Nebius
Choose Nebius for
- Choosing among 60+ third-party open models
- Serving uploaded fine-tunes with a 99.9% SLA
- Growing from tokens into raw GPU training
Mistral AI vs Nebius at a glance
| Attribute | Mistral AI | Nebius |
|---|---|---|
| Model access | Open weights, plus closed Codestral | Open weights, 60+ models |
| Flagship models | Mistral Medium 3.5, Small 4, Large 3 | DeepSeek, Qwen, GLM, Kimi, GPT-OSS |
| Speed | Unknown | Among top hosts on throughput |
| Price | $0.15–$1.50 in, $0.60–$7.50 out per 1M | From $0.06 per 1M input |
| Customization | Forge (enterprise); fine-tuning API deprecated | Serve uploaded fine-tunes |
| Deployment | API, Azure, Bedrock, Vertex, self-host | Token Factory, dedicated, raw GPUs |
| Long context | 256K | Varies by model |
Frequently asked questions
What is the difference between Mistral AI and Nebius?
Two European options. Mistral sells its own open-weight models with EU or US regions; Nebius hosts 60+ third-party open models and rents GPUs from Amsterdam.
When should I choose Mistral AI over Nebius?
Running Medium 3.5 for agentic coding; Buying through Azure, Bedrock or Vertex credits; Self-hosting open weights on a few GPUs.
When should I choose Nebius over Mistral AI?
Choosing among 60+ third-party open models; Serving uploaded fine-tunes with a 99.9% SLA; Growing from tokens into raw GPU training.
Is Mistral AI or Nebius cheaper?
Mistral AI: $0.15–$1.50 in, $0.60–$7.50 out per 1M. Nebius: From $0.06 per 1M input. The cheaper choice depends on the model and workload.
Which has more context, Mistral AI or Nebius?
Mistral AI: 256K. Nebius: Varies by model.
Related comparisons
Running long-horizon agents?
If your agents run past 200K tokens, compare both against Subconscious. Our inference stack treats a long-horizon trace as the primary workload, so speed, cost, and accuracy hold up deep into the trace.