Mistral Large 3 vs Seed 1.6 Flash

Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.

Mistral Large 3 is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 61 to 56. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.

Mistral Large 3's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 41 against 27.6. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 45 to 24. Seed 1.6 Flash does hit back in agentic, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.

Mistral Large 3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $2.00 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.08 input / $0.30 output per 1M tokens for Seed 1.6 Flash. That is roughly 20.0x on output cost alone. Seed 1.6 Flash is the reasoning model in the pair, while Mistral Large 3 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. Seed 1.6 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Mistral Large 3.

Quick Verdict

Pick Mistral Large 3 if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Seed 1.6 Flash only becomes the better choice if agentic is the priority or you want the cheaper token bill.

Agentic

Seed 1.6 Flash

Mistral Large 3

52.5

Seed 1.6 Flash

54.5

52
Terminal-Bench 2.0
52
58
BrowseComp
62
49
OSWorld-Verified
52

Coding

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

41

Seed 1.6 Flash

27.6

68
HumanEval
59
45
SWE-bench Verified
24
39
LiveCodeBench
25
42
SWE-bench Pro
31

Multimodal & Grounded

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

75.5

Seed 1.6 Flash

73.1

75
MMMU-Pro
74
76
OfficeQA Pro
72

Reasoning

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

70.6

Seed 1.6 Flash

66.8

73
SimpleQA
61
71
MuSR
59
81
BBH
75
67
LongBench v2
70
67
MRCRv2
74

Knowledge

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

57.1

Seed 1.6 Flash

47.3

76
MMLU
65
75
GPQA
64
73
SuperGPQA
62
71
OpenBookQA
60
74
MMLU-Pro
65
12
HLE
3
67
FrontierScience
57

Instruction Following

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

83

Seed 1.6 Flash

81

83
IFEval
81

Multilingual

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

78.8

Seed 1.6 Flash

72.8

82
MGSM
76
77
MMLU-ProX
71

Mathematics

Mistral Large 3

Mistral Large 3

77.3

Seed 1.6 Flash

67.1

76
AIME 2023
64
78
AIME 2024
66
77
AIME 2025
65
72
HMMT Feb 2023
60
74
HMMT Feb 2024
62
73
HMMT Feb 2025
61
75
BRUMO 2025
63
80
MATH-500
72

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 is ahead overall, 61 to 56. The biggest single separator in this matchup is SWE-bench Verified, where the scores are 45 and 24.

Which is better for knowledge tasks, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 57.1 versus 47.3. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for coding, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 41 versus 27.6. Inside this category, SWE-bench Verified is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for math, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 77.3 versus 67.1. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for reasoning, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 70.6 versus 66.8. Inside this category, SimpleQA is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for agentic tasks, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Seed 1.6 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 54.5 versus 52.5. Inside this category, BrowseComp is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multimodal and grounded tasks, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.5 versus 73.1. Inside this category, OfficeQA Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for instruction following, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 83 versus 81. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Which is better for multilingual tasks, Mistral Large 3 or Seed 1.6 Flash?

Mistral Large 3 has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 78.8 versus 72.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.

Last updated: March 12, 2026

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