Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Mistral Small costs $0.00158 per task against $0.00510 for Gemini 2.5 Flash, which makes it 3.24x cheaper (a 69% saving).

How much do Gemini 2.5 Flash and Mistral Small charge per million tokens?

Gemini 2.5 Flash: $0.3 per million input tokens and $2.5 per million output tokens. Mistral Small: $0.15 input and $0.6 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.

What does a million tasks cost on Gemini 2.5 Flash vs Mistral Small?

At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $5,100 on Gemini 2.5 Flash and $1,575 on Mistral Small. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.

Model price comparisons · August 2026

Gemini 2.5 Flash vs Mistral Small: API pricing compared

Same task, same tokens, two invoices. Every figure on this page is computed from our open pricing dataset, not copied from a blog post.

Mistral Small is 3.24x cheaper than Gemini 2.5 Flash on a realistic task profile of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens per call, 3 calls per task: $0.00158 against $0.00510 per task, a 69% saving on identical work. Run a million tasks a month and that is the difference between $1,575 and $5,100.

Model	Input $/1M tok	Output $/1M tok	Output multiple	$/task	$/1M tasks
Gemini 2.5 FlashGoogle · fast	$0.3	$2.5	8.33x	$0.00510	$5,100
Mistral SmallMistral · value	$0.15	$0.6	4x	$0.00158	$1,575

Monthly bill at three volumes

Tasks / month	Gemini 2.5 Flash	Mistral Small	Gap
10,000	$51	$16	$35
100,000	$510	$158	$352
1,000,000	$5,100	$1,575	$3,525

Where the money goes on each

Gemini 2.5 Flash prices output at 8.33x its input rate, so on this profile output is 74% of its task cost. Mistral Small prices output at 4x input, putting output at 57% of cost. The model with the higher output multiple rewards capping response length more; the one with the higher input share rewards prompt caching and context trimming more. Cost tells you nothing about quality: run both on twenty of your real cases before deciding, and treat the cheaper model as the default until it demonstrably fails.

Break-even against a dedicated GPU

Against a $2/hour dedicated instance ($1,460/month fixed), self-hosting overtakes Gemini 2.5 Flash at 286,275 tasks per month and overtakes Mistral Small at 926,984 tasks per month, which exceeds the box's capacity, so it never wins. The full method is in the self-hosting break-even guide.

Pricing the self-hosted side? Compare on-demand GPU rates:

Compare GPU cloud pricing →

Plug your own token counts into the $/task calculator, or read the full ten-model pricing comparison.

Compare against other models

Frequently asked

Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash or Mistral Small?: Mistral Small. On a task of 1,500 input and 500 output tokens across 3 calls, Mistral Small costs $0.00158 per task against $0.00510 for Gemini 2.5 Flash, which makes it 3.24x cheaper (a 69% saving).
How much do Gemini 2.5 Flash and Mistral Small charge per million tokens?: Gemini 2.5 Flash: $0.3 per million input tokens and $2.5 per million output tokens. Mistral Small: $0.15 input and $0.6 output. These are published list rates as of August 2026, excluding cached, batch and long-context tiers.
What does a million tasks cost on Gemini 2.5 Flash vs Mistral Small?: At the same fixed profile, one million tasks cost $5,100 on Gemini 2.5 Flash and $1,575 on Mistral Small. The gap comes entirely from list-price differences, not from any difference in the work done.