Head-to-head comparison
Phi 4 (Microsoft) and Mixtral 8x22B Instruct (Mistral AI) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 9 September 2026
As of 9 September 2026, Phi 4 holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#153 vs #156); Phi 4 is 42.9× cheaper per output token ($0.14/1M vs $6.00/1M); and Mixtral 8x22B Instruct offers the longer context window (66K vs 16K tokens).
Evidence: 2 public benchmark observations across 2 boards · 2 public benchmark observations across 2 boards. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
Phi 4 ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 9 September 2026: #153 against #156. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals overlap, so the rank difference alone does not establish a reliable capability advantage for your workload.
Phi 4 is cheaper on output tokens: $0.14/1M against $6.00/1M. Input tokens are $0.07/1M for Phi 4 and $2.00/1M for Mixtral 8x22B Instruct. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens. For 1,000 requests with 2,000 input and 500 output tokens each (2M input + 0.5M output), the listed-rate estimate is $0.21 for Phi 4 versus $7.00 for Mixtral 8x22B Instruct. Phi 4 costs 97.0% less in this scenario. This excludes caching, batch discounts, prompt-length tiers, tool charges and retries; verify the selected endpoint before budgeting.
Mixtral 8x22B Instruct has the larger context window: 66K tokens against 16K.
Arena coding: Phi 4 1306, Mixtral 8x22B Instruct 1277 — Phi 4 leads.
Phi 4: Open weights. Mixtral 8x22B Instruct: Open weights. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 1 API provider for Phi 4 and 1 for Mixtral 8x22B Instruct, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 9 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.