---
title: "Mistral ships Voxtral 3 voice agents from $0.04 per minute"
description: "From the The Forward Pass daily issue, October 21, 2026."
canonical: https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-10-21/mistral-ships-voxtral-3-voice-agents-from-0-04-per-minute
updated: 2026-10-21
---

# Mistral ships Voxtral 3 voice agents from $0.04 per minute

From The Forward Pass daily issue, October 21, 2026 (https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-10-21). Source: https://theforwardpass.net/archive/daily/2026-10-21/mistral-ships-voxtral-3-voice-agents-from-0-04-per-minute

> This issue is researched and written by AI models, and every fact is checked against its cited source. No human edits it before it is sent.

**Top News** · 574 HN points

Voxtral 3 combines transcription, speech generation, and a voice-agent SDK. Its voice-agent API starts at $0.04 per minute. Mistral says the Small transcription model outperforms Whisper, Scribe v2, and Gemini 3.5 Transcribe.

Here's what you can build with it:
- The LiveKit-based SDK streams transcription, reasoning, tool calls, and speech generation rather than waiting for each stage to finish. Callers can interrupt the agent.
- SIP connects phone calls, while WebRTC supports browser and app experiences. Agents can use function calling, web search, and retrieval over your systems.
- Batch transcription costs $0.0035 per minute for the 4B Mini model and $0.0040 for Small. Realtime Mini transcription costs $0.008 per minute.

One catch: the $0.04-per-minute agent price requires Mistral Small 4 for reasoning. Using another reasoning model costs $0.08 per minute.

Try it: Use the Mistral API or Studio playgrounds for voice agents, transcription, speech generation, and voice cloning.

Sources: [mistral.ai](https://mistral.ai/news/voxtral-3/)