AI model comparison
Mistral Small 4 vs Mercury 2
Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.
Mistral
Mistral Small 4
Mistral Small 4 is the next major release in the Mistral Small family, unifying the capabilities of several flagship Mistral models into a single system.
- Input / 1M
- $0.15
- Output / 1M
- $0.60
- Context
- 262K
Inception
Mercury 2
Mercury 2 is an extremely fast reasoning LLM, and the first reasoning diffusion LLM (dLLM).
- Input / 1M
- $0.25
- Output / 1M
- $0.75
- Context
- 128K
At a glance
Quick verdict
How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.
Lower price
Mistral Small 4
1.5x cheaper for a typical chat
Higher intelligence score
Mistral Small 4
11.3 vs 10.8 on Artificial Analysis
Larger context window
Mistral Small 4
262K vs 128K tokens
Newer release
Mistral Small 4
Released March 16, 2026
Benchmarks
Benchmark scores
Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.
Intelligence index
Mistral Small 411.3Mercury 210.8Coding index
Mistral Small 426.6Mercury 231.1Agentic index
Mistral Small 40.8Mercury 21.6Pricing
Mistral Small 4 vs Mercury 2 API pricing
Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.
| Metric | Mistral Small 4 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Input tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.15 | $0.25 |
| Output tokensPer 1M tokens | $0.60 | $0.75 |
| Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens | $0.02 | $0.03 |
| Cache writePer 1M tokens | Not available | Not available |
What it costs in practice
Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.
Chat message
2K in, 500 out
Mistral Small 4$0.60Mercury 2$0.88Coding task
30K in, 4K out
Mistral Small 4$6.90$2.85 cachedMercury 2$10.50$3.75 cachedLong document summary
150K in, 2K out
Mistral Small 4$23.70$3.45 cachedMercury 2$39$5.25 cachedSpecs
Context window and capabilities
How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.
| Metric | Mistral Small 4 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Context window | 262K tokens | 128K tokens |
| Max output | 210K tokens | 50K tokens |
| Input types | Image, Text | Text |
| Output types | Text | Text |
| Reasoning effort levels | High, None | High, Medium, Low, None |
| Default reasoning effort | High | Medium |
| Release date | March 16, 2026 | March 4, 2026 |
Features
Supported features
API features available for each model.
| Metric | Mistral Small 4 | Mercury 2 |
|---|---|---|
| Tool calling | Supported | Supported |
| Structured outputs | Supported | Supported |
| JSON mode | Supported | Supported |
| Reasoning | Supported | Supported |
| Temperature | Supported | Supported |
| Stop sequences | Supported | Supported |
| Deterministic seed | Supported | Not supported |
| Verbosity control | Not supported | Not supported |
Keep exploring
More on these models
Other head-to-heads, the full model page, and the alternatives list for each model.
Mistral Small 4View full model details- Mistral Small 4 vs Gemini 2.5 Flash Lite
- Mistral Small 4 vs gpt-oss-120b
- Mistral Small 4 vs GPT-5 Nano
- Mistral Small 4 vs Nemotron 3 Super
- Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3 235B A22B Instruct 2507
- Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B
- Mistral Small 4 vs GLM 4.6V
- Mistral Small 4 vs GLM 4.5 Air
- Mistral Small 4 vs Trinity Large Thinking
- Mistral Small 4 vs Llama 4 Maverick
- Mistral Small 4 vs Mistral Large 3 2512
- Mistral Small 4 vs Mistral Medium 3.1
- Mistral Small 4 vs Saba
Our take
Mistral Small 4 is 1.5x cheaper for a typical chat. Mistral Small 4 scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (11.3 vs 10.8). Mistral Small 4 has the larger context window (262K vs 128K tokens). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.
FAQ
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 4 or Mercury 2 cheaper?
Mistral Small 4 is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Mistral Small 4 costs $0.15 per 1M input tokens and $0.60 per 1M output tokens, while Mercury 2 costs $0.25 per 1M input tokens and $0.75 per 1M output tokens.
Which has a bigger context window, Mistral Small 4 or Mercury 2?
Mistral Small 4 supports up to 262K tokens of context, compared with 128K for Mercury 2.
Is Mistral Small 4 smarter than Mercury 2?
On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Mistral Small 4 scores 11.3 and Mercury 2 scores 10.8, putting Mistral Small 4 ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.
Can I use Mistral Small 4 and Mercury 2 at the same time?
Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Mistral Small 4 and Mercury 2 answer side by side and keep the better response.
Why choose? Ask both.
Send one prompt to Mistral Small 4 and Mercury 2 at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.