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LongCat-2.5 vs Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

LongCat-2.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 50.0 to 3.7. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is 9.1x cheaper per token.

Meituan · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

LongCat-2.5 leads the overall LLM Stats Score 50.0 to 3.7, ranking #20 overall.

On price, Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is roughly 9.1x 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

  • overall performance matters — it scores 50.0 and ranks #20 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • 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 3 24B Instruct

  • cost matters — it's about 9.1x cheaper per token
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

LongCat-2.5
Meituan
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
50.0
#20
3.7
#342
Reasoning
48.3
#21
3.2
#339
Coding
38.6
#27
4.5
#239
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.30 / M
$0.05 / M
Output price
$1.20 / M
$0.08 / M
Context window
1,048,576
32,768

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
LongCat-2.5
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Math
37.2#37
6.9#288
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

23 reported for LongCat-2.5 · 8 for Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

No common benchmarks found

LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instructdon'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

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct costs less

For input processing, LongCat-2.5 ($0.30/1M tokens) is 6.0x more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct ($0.05/1M tokens).

For output processing, LongCat-2.5 ($1.20/1M tokens) is 15.0x more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct ($0.08/1M tokens).

In conclusion, LongCat-2.5 is more expensive than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Fri Nov 06 2026 • llm-stats.com
Meituan
LongCat-2.5
Input tokens$0.30
Output tokens$1.20
Best providerMeituan
Mistral AI
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Input tokens$0.05
Output tokens$0.08
Best providerDeepinfra
Notice missing or incorrect data?

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

1576.0B diff

LongCat-2.5 has 1576.0B more parameters than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct, making it 6566.7% larger.

Meituan
LongCat-2.5
1.6Tparameters
Mistral AI
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
24.0Bparameters
1600.0B
LongCat-2.5
24.0B
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

LongCat-2.5 accepts 1,048,576 input tokens compared to Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct's 32,768 tokens. LongCat-2.5 can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is limited to 32,768 tokens.

Meituan
LongCat-2.5
Input1,048,576 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Mistral AI
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Input32,768 tokens
Output32,768 tokens
Fri Nov 06 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

LongCat-2.5 supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct 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

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

LongCat-2.5 was released on 2026-11-01, while Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct was released on 2025-01-30.

LongCat-2.5 is 21 months newer than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.

LongCat-2.5

Nov 1, 2026

4 days ago

1.8yr newer
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Jan 30, 2025

1.8 years ago

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2023-10-01, while LongCat-2.5's cutoff date is not specified.

We can confirm Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct's training data extends to 2023-10-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without LongCat-2.5's cutoff date.

LongCat-2.5

—

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

Oct 2023

Provider Availability

LongCat-2.5 is available from Meituan. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is available from DeepInfra, Mistral AI.

LongCat-2.5

meituan logo
Meituan
Input Price:Input: $0.30/1MOutput Price:Output: $1.20/1M

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct

deepinfra logo
Deepinfra
Input Price:Input: $0.05/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.08/1M
mistral logo
Mistral
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.30/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

LongCat-2.5
✓ Preferred
Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about LongCat-2.5 vs Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct.

Which is better, LongCat-2.5 or Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

LongCat-2.5 leads the LLM Stats Score 50.0 to 3.7. LongCat-2.5 is made by Meituan and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is made by Mistral AI. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does LongCat-2.5 compare to Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct in benchmarks?

LongCat-2.5 scores MathVision: 96.5%, BrowseComp: 91.9%, CharXiv-R: 90.2%, Terminal-Bench 2.1: 88.4%, Video-MME: 85.2%. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct scores Arena Hard: 87.6%, HumanEval: 84.8%, MT-Bench: 83.5%, IFEval: 82.9%, MATH: 70.6%.

Is LongCat-2.5 cheaper than Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is 6.0x cheaper for input tokens. LongCat-2.5 costs $0.30/M input and $1.20/M output via meituan. Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct costs $0.05/M input and $0.08/M output via deepinfra.

What are the context window sizes for LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

LongCat-2.5 supports 1.0M tokens and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct supports 33K tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (50.0 vs 3.7), context window (1.0M vs 33K), input pricing ($0.30 vs $0.05/M), multimodal support (yes vs no), licensing (Unknown vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes LongCat-2.5 and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct?

LongCat-2.5 is developed by Meituan and Mistral Small 3 24B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI.

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