Model comparison
Kimi K2.6 vs Mistral Small
Kimi K2.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.7 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 6.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 26 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K2.6 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small in 2 categories; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Kimi K2.6 leads 57.0 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 96.1% for Kimi K2.6 and 5.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.95 / $4 for Kimi K2.6.
Side by side
| Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 47.7 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2026-04-20 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.95 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $4 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 50.7 (#43), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 53.5% | 26.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1488 | 1362 |
| ALE-Bench | 1,093 | 497.62 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 76.7% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1509 | — |
| WeirdML | 55.9% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Small leads
Kimi K2.6: 21.9 (#137), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 4.6% | — |
| ExploitBench | 18.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 0.9% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 12% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 6,205 | — |
Reasoning Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 40.5 (#55), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 8% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1470 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 90.9% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 37.3% | 20.6% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 87.2% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 26% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 2.4% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 18% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 151.05 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 57.0 (#41), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 96.1% | 5.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1475 | 1341 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 57.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 25.6% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 72.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 16% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 39% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 14.6% | — |
Knowledge Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 54.0 (#54), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 90.8% | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 10.8% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1491 | 1291 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 34.9% | — |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Mistral Small leads
Kimi K2.6: 31.6 (#103), Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1283 | 1142 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 3.9% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 21.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1451 | — |
Multilingual Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 54.9 (#37), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1446 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1521 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1471 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1450 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1443 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1427 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1446 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1464 | 1346 |
Instruction Following Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 76.3 (#43), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1451 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
Long Context Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 44.9 (#52), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1468 | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Kimi K2.6 leads
Kimi K2.6: 68.5 (#26), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
| Benchmark | Kimi K2.6 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1455 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1434 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1453 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1725 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1202 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi K2.6 better than Mistral Small?
Kimi K2.6 is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.7 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 6.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K2.6's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K2.6 or Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Kimi K2.6 lists at $0.95 and $4.
Is Kimi K2.6 or Mistral Small better for coding?
Kimi K2.6 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.7 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Kimi K2.6 and Mistral Small share?
26 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K2.6 has 51 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.