Codestral 2508 vs Grok 3

Summary of our 12-test comparison (scores out of 5, with ranks where available). Wins, ties: Grok 3 wins 7 tests, Codestral 2508 wins 1, and 4 tests tie. Detailed walk-through: - Tool calling: Codestral 2508 scores 5 (tied for 1st among 54), Grok 3 scores 4 (rank 18). Practical meaning: Codestral is stronger at function selection, argument accuracy and sequencing — key for fill-in-the-middle, code correction and tool-integrated workflows. - Strategic analysis: Grok 3 scores 5 (tied for 1st), Codestral 2508 scores 2 (rank 44). Grok substantially outperforms on nuanced trade-off reasoning and numeric decisions. - Classification: Grok 3 scores 4 (tied for 1st), Codestral 2508 scores 3 (rank 31). Grok is better for routing, tagging, and extraction accuracy. - Multilingual: Grok 3 scores 5 (tied for 1st), Codestral 2508 scores 4 (rank 36). Expect higher parity across non-English outputs with Grok. - Persona consistency: Grok 3 scores 5 (tied for 1st), Codestral 2508 scores 3 (rank 45). Grok resists injection and maintains character more reliably. - Agentic planning: Grok 3 scores 5 (tied for 1st), Codestral 2508 scores 4 (rank 16). Grok is stronger at goal decomposition and recovery. - Creative problem solving: Grok 3 scores 3 vs Codestral 2; Grok produces more feasible, non-obvious ideas. - Safety calibration: Grok 3 scores 2 (rank 12) vs Codestral 2508's 1 (rank 32); Grok better distinguishes harmful vs legitimate requests. - Faithfulness, structured_output, long_context: tied (both score 5 and rank tied for 1st in several). Both models adhere to JSON/schema constraints, stick to source material, and handle 30K+ token contexts equally well in our tests. - Constrained rewriting: tied (3 each). Implication: for strict character-limited editing both are comparable. In short: pick Codestral for high-speed, cost-effective tool-calling and coding microtasks; pick Grok for strategic reasoning, classification, multilingual and safer outputs.

Per-mTok pricing: Codestral 2508 charges $0.30 input / $0.90 output; Grok 3 charges $3.00 input / $15.00 output. At 1M tokens (1,000 mTok): Codestral costs $300 input / $900 output (or $600 for a 50/50 split); Grok costs $3,000 input / $15,000 output (or $9,000 for 50/50). At 10M tokens: Codestral $3,000 input / $9,000 output (50/50 = $6,000); Grok $30,000 input / $150,000 output (50/50 = $90,000). At 100M tokens: Codestral $30,000 input / $90,000 output (50/50 = $60,000); Grok $300,000 input / $1,500,000 output (50/50 = $900,000). The cost gap grows linearly: Grok's output token price is 16.67× higher ($15 / $0.90). Teams with millions of tokens/month, batch code generation, or production tool-calling will feel this difference immediately; enterprises needing best-in-class reasoning may accept Grok's premium, while cost-sensitive engineering pipelines will prefer Codestral.

Choose Codestral 2508 if: - Your priority is low-cost, high-throughput coding/tool-calling (Codestral scores 5 in tool_calling and is tied for top rank), or you run millions of tokens/month and need to minimize spend ($0.90 output/mTok). Examples: FIM pipelines, CI test generation, high-frequency code-correction hooks. Choose Grok 3 if: - You need stronger strategic analysis, classification, multilingual capability, persona consistency, and better safety calibration (Grok wins 7 of 12 benchmarks including strategic_analysis=5, classification=4, multilingual=5, agentic_planning=5). Examples: enterprise data extraction, multi-language summarization, decisioning systems where reasoning quality and safety matter more than per-token cost.