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Mistral Medium vs Yi-Lightning

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Mistral Medium specs · Yi-Lightning specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceYi-Lightning

    Yi-Lightning is roughly 14.3× cheaper on output tokens ($0.14 vs $2.00 per 1M).

  • Context windowMistral Medium

    Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 16K, 8.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessTie

    Both are closed-weight, API-only.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Mistral Medium and Yi-Lightning: 1 category wins each, with the rest tied. Yi-Lightning is roughly 14.3× cheaper on output tokens ($0.14 vs $2.00 per 1M). Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 16K, 8.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both are closed-weight, API-only.

Mistral Medium is the newer of the two, released 2 months after Yi-Lightning, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Medium is usually picked for customer support and chatbots workloads, while Yi-Lightning sees more deployments in chinese llm and cheapest llm. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecMistral MediumYi-Lightning
ProviderMistralOther
ReleasedDec 2024Oct 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens16K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.40 / 1M tokens$0.14 / 1M tokens
Output · 1M$2.00 / 1M tokens$0.14 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsNoNo
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day$4.20 vs $0.630
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$42.00 vs $6.30
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$72.00 vs $21.84

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: $4.20 vs $0.630 per month, model B comes out ahead. Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: $42.00 vs $6.30 per month, model B comes out ahead. RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: $72.00 vs $21.84 per month, model B comes out ahead.

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Mistral Medium$0.140
  • Yi-Lightning$0.021

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Mistral Medium if

Mistral Medium fits when…

  • Mid-tier balance
  • EU-friendly
  • Long-context tasks, handles 128K tokens vs 16K for Yi-Lightning.
Pick Yi-Lightning if

Yi-Lightning fits when…

  • Cheap
  • Strong Chinese
  • Fast
  • Cost-sensitive workloads, 14.3× cheaper than Mistral Medium on output tokens.
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsMistral Medium vs Mistral Large 2Yi-Lightning vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Mistral Medium or Yi-Lightning cheaper?
    Yi-Lightning is cheaper at $0.14 / 1M tokens per million output tokens, vs $2.00 / 1M tokens for Mistral Medium.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Mistral Medium accepts 128K tokens vs 16K for Yi-Lightning.
  • Is Mistral Medium or Yi-Lightning better for coding?
    Both Mistral Medium and Yi-Lightning are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Neither model ships open weights, both are accessible only via their respective providers' APIs.
  • When were Mistral Medium and Yi-Lightning released?
    Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18. Yi-Lightning was released by Other on 2024-10-16.
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