Codestral 2508 vs o4 Mini
Codestral 2508 costs 4.9x less per output token than o4 Mini ($0.90 vs $4.40 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 7 benchmarks have a result for both.
Codestral 2508 or o4 Mini: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Codestral 2508 for output tokens 4.9x cheaper ($0.90 vs $4.40 per million) and a larger context window (256K against 200K tokens).
- Shared results
- 7
- Codestral 2508 only
- 1
- o4 Mini only
- 91
- Like-for-like categories
- 2 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Neither has a coding score yet.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only o4 Mini has a AA Intelligence Index result, 16.7.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only o4 Mini has a GPQA Diamond result, 74.5%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only o4 Mini has a AIME result, 83.7%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only o4 Mini has a MMLU Pro result, 80.6%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Codestral 2508
Codestral 2508 leads, 1013 against 985.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Codestral 2508
Codestral 2508 takes 256K tokens against 200K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Codestral 2508
Codestral 2508 $0.0008, o4 Mini $0.0033 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Codestral 2508 not benchmarked, o4 Mini not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Reasoning, 35.1 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- Kagi LLM Benchmark: Codestral 2508 32.5% against o4 Mini 67.6%, 35.1 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Codestral 2508 $0.90 against o4 Mini $4.40 per million output tokens, 4.9x apart.
- Context window
- Codestral 2508 takes 256K tokens, o4 Mini 200K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Codestral 2508 | Bars | o4 Mini | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Reasoning | 0 | 1 | ||
| Web design | 5 | 1 | ||
| All shared boards | 5 | 2 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Aider polyglot | Not measured | 72.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Verified | Not measured | 64.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | Not measured | 33.9% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 82.2% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 85.9% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 15.2% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| GSO-Bench | Not measured | 3.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| WeirdML | Not measured | 52.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| ALE-Bench | 137.8 | Not measured | Only Codestral 2508 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1368 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1367 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| SciCode | Not measured | 10.8% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 27 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 16.7 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 145.5 | Only o4 Mini measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index3 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 55.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| METR time horizons | Not measured | 63.9% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard (BFCL) | Not measured | 53.2% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 38 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index01
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 74.5% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 79.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 78.4% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 16.5% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | Not measured | 79.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI | Not measured | 58.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | Not measured | 6.1% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| SimpleBench | Not measured | 38.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 22.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 5.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| VPCT | Not measured | 57.5% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1351 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1343 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1366 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | Not measured | 1197 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | Not measured | 1234 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | 67.6% | o4 Mini |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 83.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MATH 500 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 94.2% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MGSM (Vals AI) | Not measured | 93.4% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| AA Math Index | Not measured | 90.7 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 90.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Not measured | 81.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 36.1% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| FrontierMath, tier 4 | Not measured | 4.9% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MATH level 5 | Not measured | 97.8% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1389 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1379 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 2 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index15 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 80.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 79.2% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 59.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 74.8% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 64.8% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MedQA (Vals AI) | Not measured | 96.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 33.8% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 83.2% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 19.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| GeoBench | Not measured | 64.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1354 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1361 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1350 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1325 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| FACTS Benchmark Suite | Not measured | 28.1% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index51
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1013 | 985 | Codestral 2508 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1017 | 983 | Codestral 2508 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 968 | 1003 | o4 Mini |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1017 | 990 | Codestral 2508 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1020 | 854 | Codestral 2508 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1007 | 976 | Codestral 2508 |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index33 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 41.1% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 69.1% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| IFBench | Not measured | 68.7% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | Not measured | 61.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| DTBench | Not measured | 77.6% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 26.5% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Fiction.LiveBench | Not measured | 77.8% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Creative writing (Lech Mazur) | Not measured | 75.0% | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1353 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1320 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1294 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision | Not measured | 1194 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1367 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1337 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1354 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1336 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1308 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1312 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1364 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1346 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1334 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1358 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1350 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1315 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1316 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1308 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | Not measured | 1200 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | Not measured | 1218 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | Not measured | 1197 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | Not measured | 1199 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | Not measured | 1204 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | Not measured | 1218 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | Not measured | 1166 | Only o4 Mini measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 13 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | o4 Mini | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Mistral Codestral 2508 | OpenAI o4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral AI | OpenAI |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | August 1, 2025 | April 16, 2025 |
| Context window | 256K | 200K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.30 | $1.10 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.90 | $4.40 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Codestral 2508 better than o4 Mini for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Codestral 2508 for output tokens 4.9x cheaper ($0.90 vs $4.40 per million) and a larger context window (256K against 200K tokens).
Which is cheaper, Codestral 2508 or o4 Mini?
Codestral 2508 costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; o4 Mini costs $1.10 and $4.40. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Codestral 2508 or o4 Mini?
Codestral 2508, with 256K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks is the Codestral 2508 vs o4 Mini comparison based on?
7 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Codestral 2508's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and o4 Mini's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.