# Mistral Launches Voxtral 3 Speech Models and a Voice-Agent API From $0.04 a Minute

Times of AI Desk · 2026-10-21 · Models

[https://timesof.ai/2026/10/mistral-voxtral-3-speech-models-voice-agent-api-eu-hosted](https://timesof.ai/2026/10/mistral-voxtral-3-speech-models-voice-agent-api-eu-hosted)

> Mistral released Voxtral 3 on Oct. 20: speech-to-text models covering 50+ languages, Voxtral Speech 3 (Mini TTS 3) for 35+ languages and 50+ dialects, and a LiveKit-based voice-agent SDK. Listed prices include $0.0035/min for Mini Transcribe batch and $0.04/min for the agent API with Mistral Small 4. Benchmark wins are Mistral's own.

Contact-centre voice agents are a volume market; Mistral is competing on hosting choice and list price. On **Tuesday, October 20**, **Mistral** released **Voxtral 3**: **Voxtral Small Transcribe 3** and a **4B Mini Transcribe 3** for speech-to-text in **50+** languages with diarization and context biasing; **Voxtral Realtime Transcribe 3** at sub-500ms latency in **over 35** languages; and **Voxtral Speech 3** (**Mini TTS 3**) for expressive text-to-speech in **35+** languages and **50+** dialects.

A voice-agent SDK built on **LiveKit** chains listening, reasoning with a model such as **Mistral Small 4**, tool calling and speech into one streaming pipeline. Mistral says each turn completes in under a second and works over SIP telephony and WebRTC. Listed prices include **$0.0035/min** (Mini Transcribe batch), **$0.008/min** (Mini Transcribe realtime), **$13** per 1M characters (Speech 3), and **$0.04/min** for the agent API with Mistral Small 4, or **$0.08/min** with any other reasoning model. It runs on Mistral's European, US and global endpoints or on customers' own infrastructure.

Mistral claims state-of-the-art transcription and diarization, ahead of Whisper, Scribe v2 and Gemini 3.5 Transcribe. Those comparisons, and most of its TTS charts, are Mistral's own evaluations — several TTS panels are internal evals judged by a Gemini model.

## Limits

- Transcription and TTS benchmark wins are vendor-reported; The Decoder restates the launch without independent tests.
- Realtime language count is stated as "over 35" in the FLEURS section (another blurb says 40+); we use 35+.

## Sources

- [Mistral AI: Voxtral 3 (October 20, 2026)](https://mistral.ai/news/voxtral-3/)
- [The Decoder: Mistral AI launches Voxtral 3 (October 20, 2026)](https://the-decoder.com/mistral-ai-launches-voxtral-3-a-full-voice-agent-stack-that-listens-thinks-and-talks-in-real-time/)