Nova Micro 1.0 vs Mistral Small 3 vs Grok 4.20
Nova Micro 1.0 at $0.040 in and $0.161 out, Mistral Small 3 at $0.058 in and $0.092 out, and Grok 4.20 at $1.44 in and $2.88 out — per million tokens, from the same wallet.
Nova Micro 1.0
Amazon
0.03¢
for a client proposal
$0.040 in · $0.161 out / 1M
128K context · released December 2024
Mistral Small 3
Mistral AI
0.04¢
for a client proposal
$0.058 in · $0.092 out / 1M
33K context · released January 2025
Grok 4.20
xAI
0.95¢
for a client proposal
$1.44 in · $2.88 out / 1M
2M context · released 4 months ago
Asking all three at once — identical prompt, identical context — costs about 1¢ for a typical client proposal.
At a glance
- Cheapest input: Nova Micro 1.0 at $0.040 per million tokens.
- Cheapest output: Mistral Small 3 at $0.092 per million tokens.
- Largest context: Grok 4.20 at 2M tokens — about 2,900 pages.
Cost per task
Estimated totals at the rates above. Solid bar is input, lighter bar is output.
Quick code fix
2K in · 500 outDraft a client proposal from notes
5K in · 800 outContext-heavy session (Alyph workspace)
155K in · 4K outAnalyze a 50-page legal contract
35K in · 1K outLarge architecture refactor
250K in · 3K outLong-context rate applied at this input size.
Solid part of each bar is input tokens, the lighter part is output. Models that don’t fit a task are marked instead of priced.
Cost vs Token Amount
Drag the slider to adjust the split between input and output workload.
Adjust the ratio slider to change how output tokens influence the final price for equivalent workloads.
Pricing
Specs
Try it with real numbers
2K tokens in · 500 tokens out.
All 3, same prompt and context: 0.46¢. That is the entire cost of the comparison.
Your $5 welcome credit covers about 1,078 of these.
Which should you pick?
For long documents, Grok 4.20 has the largest context window here — 2M tokens.
On price, Nova Micro 1.0 is the cheapest of the three on a typical task, at about 0.03¢.
For images or files, Grok 4.20 can read them directly; Nova Micro 1.0 and Mistral Small 3 are text-only.
If you want to watch the model think, Grok 4.20 shows reasoning; the others answer directly.
Or don’t pick. Send the identical prompt to all three, read the answers side by side, and keep the winner. How to run a fair bake-off →
Questions, answered
Which is cheapest — Nova Micro 1.0, Mistral Small 3, or Grok 4.20?
Which has the largest context window?
Can I run Nova Micro 1.0, Mistral Small 3, and Grok 4.20 side by side on Alyph?
Ask all three at once
Identical prompt, identical context, answers side by side — about 1¢ for a typical client proposal. Free to start, with $5 of credit.