Codestral vs QVQ 72B Preview

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

Codestral

Mistral

Mistral's dedicated coding model. Open-weight and highly optimized for code generation and completion.

Input	$0.300/M
Output	$0.900/M
Context	128K tokens
Best For	Code completion, code generation, IDE integration
Benchmark	60/100

Qwen

Qwen's visual reasoning model. Advanced image + text reasoning capabilities.

Input	$0.500/M
Output	$1.50/M
Context	32K tokens
Best For	Image analysis, visual question answering, multimodal reasoning

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

Scenario	Codestral	QVQ 72B Preview	Savings
Small Script (1K lines)	$0.04	$0.06	Codestral saves $0.03 (40%)
Medium Feature (10K lines)	$0.29	$0.48	Codestral saves $0.19 (40%)
Large Project (50K lines)	$1.43	$2.38	Codestral saves $0.95 (40%)
Code Review (5K lines)	$0.07	$0.13	Codestral saves $0.05 (40%)

Codestral wins on both price and performance — $0.300/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Anthropic's balanced model for coding and general tasks. Best price-performance ratio in the Claude family.

Anthropic's most powerful model. Best for complex reasoning and challenging coding tasks.

Previous generation Sonnet. Still excellent for coding tasks at the same price point.

Fast, cost-effective model for high-volume tasks. Great for code review and simple queries.

First generation Opus. Highest reasoning capability in the Claude 3 family.

First generation Sonnet. Balanced performance for general tasks.