LongCat-Flash-Lite vs Magistral Medium
LongCat-Flash-Lite and Magistral Medium are closely matched at 18.6 and 13.1 on the LLM Stats Score.
Meituan · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
LongCat-Flash-Lite and Magistral Medium are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at 18.6 and 13.1.
In the 3 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Magistral Medium wins 3; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.
Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose LongCat-Flash-Lite
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Feb 2026
Choose Magistral Medium
- you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 3 of 3 exact shared results
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Capability indexes
Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks
Individual benchmarks
13 reported for LongCat-Flash-Lite · 6 for Magistral Medium
LongCat-Flash-Lite outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Magistral Medium is better at 3 benchmarks (AIME 2024, AIME 2025, GPQA).
Magistral Medium significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.
Human preference
Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
LongCat-Flash-Lite has 44.5B more parameters than Magistral Medium, making it 185.4% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only LongCat-Flash-Lite specifies input context (256,000 tokens). Only LongCat-Flash-Lite specifies output context (128,000 tokens).
Input capabilities
Documented input modalities across available providers
Magistral Medium supports multimodal inputs, whereas LongCat-Flash-Lite does not.
Magistral Medium can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
LongCat-Flash-Lite
Magistral Medium
License
Usage and distribution terms
LongCat-Flash-Lite is licensed under MIT, while Magistral Medium uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
MIT
Open weights
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
LongCat-Flash-Lite was released on 2026-02-05, while Magistral Medium was released on 2025-06-10.
LongCat-Flash-Lite is 8 months newer than Magistral Medium.
Feb 5, 2026
8 months ago
8mo newerJun 10, 2025
1.3 years ago
Knowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Magistral Medium has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2025-06-01, while LongCat-Flash-Lite's cutoff date is not specified.
We can confirm Magistral Medium's training data extends to 2025-06-01, but cannot make a direct comparison without LongCat-Flash-Lite's cutoff date.
—
Jun 2025
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against LongCat-Flash-Lite and Magistral Medium side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about LongCat-Flash-Lite vs Magistral Medium.