Head-to-head comparison
Saba (Mistral AI) 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 17 August 2026
As of 17 August 2026, Mixtral 8x22B Instruct holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#203 vs #222); Saba is 10× cheaper per output token ($0.60/1M vs $6.00/1M); Mixtral 8x22B Instruct offers the longer context window (66K vs 33K tokens); and Mixtral 8x22B Instruct ships open weights.
Evidence: 1 public benchmark observation across 1 board · 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.
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Mixtral 8x22B Instruct ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 17 August 2026: #203 against #222. 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.
Saba is cheaper on output tokens: $0.60/1M against $6.00/1M. Input tokens are $0.20/1M for Saba and $2.00/1M for Mixtral 8x22B Instruct. Prices are the lowest listed API offer ModelCap observed, in USD per million tokens.
Mixtral 8x22B Instruct has the larger context window: 66K tokens against 33K.
The two models do not share a coding benchmark board on ModelCap yet, so no head-to-head coding score is published; the ModelCap Index position is the closest overall signal.
Saba: API only. 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 Saba 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 17 August 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.