Llama 3.1 70B Instruct vs Mixtral 8×7B Instruct

Llama 3.1 70B Instruct vs Mixtral 8×7B Instruct: Mixtral 8×7B Instruct is cheaper by 93% on average. Llama 3.1 70B Instruct from Perplexity (131,072-token context) vs. Mixtral 8×7B Instruct from Perplexity (4,096-token context). Use Agent Command Center to A/B both in shadow mode and pick the winner per workload.

Side-by-side cost

Live workload comparison

Same workload run through both models. The cheaper one is highlighted.

3,000
0131,072
400
0131,072
5,000
01,000,000
Perplexity
$517/mo
Input $1.00/M · Output $1.00/M
Perplexity
$49.00/mo
Input $0.0700/M · Output $0.280/M
At this workload, Mixtral 8×7B Instruct is 91% cheaper than Llama 3.1 70B Instruct — a savings of $468/month ($5,621/year).
Production recipe — Agent Command Center
strategy: cost-optimized
primary:
  model: mixtral-8x7b-instruct
  provider: perplexity
fallback:
  model: llama-3-1-70b-instruct
  provider: perplexity
shadow: { sample_rate: 0.05 }   # mirror 5% of traffic to compare quality live
Llama 3.1 70B Instruct Mixtral 8×7B Instruct
Input price $1.00/M $0.0700/M
Output price $1.00/M $0.280/M
Context window 131,072 4,096
Max output 131,072 4,096
Function calling
Vision
Audio input
Reasoning
Prompt caching
Structured output
Pricing verified May 12, 2026 May 12, 2026
Cheaper option
~93% cheaper than Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Larger context
131,072 tokens
More capabilities
0 of 6 capability flags advertised