Model comparison

MiniMax-M2 vs Mistral Small

MiniMax-M2 is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.4 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 2.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax-M2's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 16 shared benchmarks.

MiniMax-M2

MiniMax

37.4

Rank #204 Confirmed

Mistral Small

Mistral AI

33.4

Rank #243 Confirmed

Summary

They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax-M2 scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in math, where MiniMax-M2 leads 37.3 to 16.4.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 57.8% for MiniMax-M2 and 37.8% for Mistral Small.
Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $1.20 for MiniMax-M2.
Mistral Small accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 205K.

Side by side

MiniMax-M2 and Mistral Small specifications
	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
Provider	MiniMax	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	37.4	33.4
Released	2025-10-27	2024-02-26
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	205K	262K
Max output	131K	256K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.30	$0.15
Output $ / M tokens	$1.20	$0.60
Results tracked	21	39

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Category by category

Coding MiniMax-M2 leads

MiniMax-M2: 39.3 (#159), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Coding	1370	1362
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)	61%	—
LMArena WebDev	1297	—
SciCode	—	26.5%
BigCodeBench Instruct	—	36.1%
LiveBench Coding	—	36.2%
BigCodeBench Complete	—	46.6%
ALE-Bench	—	497.62

Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Small leads

MiniMax-M2: 25.1 (#109), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
Terminal-Bench	30%	—
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	37.1%
Vending-Bench 2	160.6	—

Reasoning Too close to call

MiniMax-M2: 19.4 (#258), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
Kagi LLM Benchmark	57.8%	37.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1357	1335
NYT Connections (extended)	14.8%	—
CritPt	—	0%
LiveBench Reasoning	—	44.8%
DTBench	—	70.9%
LiveBench Data Analysis	—	53.7%
LMCA	—	20.6%
LiveBench	—	44%

Math MiniMax-M2 leads

MiniMax-M2: 37.3 (#160), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Math	1352	1341
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	5.8%
LiveBench Math	—	39.9%
MATH Level 5	—	46.8%

Knowledge MiniMax-M2 leads

MiniMax-M2: 37.0 (#163), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Expert	1337	1291
GPQA Diamond	—	47.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	5.1%
MMLU	—	68.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

MiniMax-M2: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Vision	—	1142

Multilingual Too close to call

MiniMax-M2: 45.3 (#171), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Non-English	1313	1315
LMArena Chinese	1366	1340
LMArena French	1335	1337
LMArena German	1355	1340
LMArena Russian	1331	1324
LMArena Spanish	1326	1346
LMArena Japanese	—	1275
LMArena Korean	—	1259

Instruction Following MiniMax-M2 leads

MiniMax-M2: 70.2 (#166), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following	1328	1310
LiveBench Instruction Following	—	63.7%

Long Context Too close to call

MiniMax-M2: 40.5 (#153), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Longer Query	1331	1327

Writing & Preference Too close to call

MiniMax-M2: 53.0 (#162), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	MiniMax-M2	Mistral Small
LMArena Text	1340	1338
LMArena Creative Writing	1286	1305
LMArena Multi-Turn	1361	1344
LiveBench Language	—	30.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is MiniMax-M2 better than Mistral Small?

Which is cheaper, MiniMax-M2 or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; MiniMax-M2 lists at $0.30 and $1.20.

Is MiniMax-M2 or Mistral Small better for coding?

MiniMax-M2 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.3 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Small does, with 262K tokens against 205K.

How many benchmarks do MiniMax-M2 and Mistral Small share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax-M2 has 21 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.