Side-by-side comparison of Kimi K2 Instruct (Moonshot AI · China) and Mistral Small 4 (Mistral AI · France) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. Kimi K2 Instruct is rated conditional; Mistral Small 4 is EU-ready. They part ways on licence: Kimi K2 Instruct is "Modified MIT", Mistral Small 4 is "Apache 2.0".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | Conditional 1T-parameter MoE (32B active) tuned for agentic and tool-use workflows. Modified MIT permits commercial use. Same Chinese-origin alignment and supply-chain considerations as DeepSeek and Qwen. | EU-ready Unified model folding Instruct, reasoning (Magistral) and code (Devstral) into a single 119B MoE under Apache 2.0. 6.5B active params, 256K context, 24 languages, toggleable reasoning effort. Strongest permissive EU option at this scale. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-16 | 2026-04-15 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | Modified MIT | Apache 2.0 |
| Commercial use | Yes | Yes |
| Training data | Undisclosed | Undisclosed |
| Origin | China | EU |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | 26/100 | 19/100 |
| Speed | 34 tok/s | 147 tok/s |
| Blended price | $1.04/M | $0.26/M |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.