LongCat-2.5 vs Mistral Small
Comparing LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Meituan · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
On price, Mistral Small is roughly 1.7x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.
LongCat-2.5 also accepts a larger context window (1,048,576 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose LongCat-2.5
- you process long inputs — it offers a 1,048,576 token context window
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2026
Choose Mistral Small
- cost matters — it's about 1.7x cheaper per token
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Individual benchmarks
23 reported for LongCat-2.5 · 0 for Mistral Small
LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Smalldon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, LongCat-2.5 ($0.30/1M tokens) is 1.5x more expensive than Mistral Small ($0.20/1M tokens).
For output processing, LongCat-2.5 ($1.20/1M tokens) is 2.0x more expensive than Mistral Small ($0.60/1M tokens).
In conclusion, LongCat-2.5 is more expensive than Mistral Small.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
LongCat-2.5 has 1578.0B more parameters than Mistral Small, making it 7172.7% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
LongCat-2.5 accepts 1,048,576 input tokens compared to Mistral Small's 32,768 tokens. LongCat-2.5 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while Mistral Small is limited to 32,768 tokens.
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
LongCat-2.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small does not.
LongCat-2.5 can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
LongCat-2.5
Mistral Small
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
LongCat-2.5 was released on 2026-11-01, while Mistral Small was released on 2024-09-17.
LongCat-2.5 is 26 months newer than Mistral Small.
Nov 1, 2026
3 days ago
2.1yr newerSep 17, 2024
2.1 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Provider Availability
LongCat-2.5 is available from Meituan. Mistral Small is available from Mistral AI.
LongCat-2.5
Mistral Small
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about LongCat-2.5 vs Mistral Small.