Llama 3 vs Mistral: Best Open-Weight LLM for Self-Hosting?

Verdict Llama 3.1 405B is the most capable open-weight model available and matches or exceeds proprietary models on many benchmarks, but its size requires serious infrastructure to deploy. Mistral Large 2 offers an excellent balance of performance and efficiency, running comfortably on smaller GPU clusters, making it the practical default for teams self-hosting without hyperscale resources.