Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Magistral Small 2506
Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control (2025) and Magistral Small 2506 (2025) are frontier reasoning models from NVIDIA AI and MistralAI. Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control ships a 4k-token context window, while Magistral Small 2506 ships a 128k-token context window. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Magistral Small 2506 fits 32x more tokens; pick it for long-context work and Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control for tighter calls.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control | Magistral Small 2506 |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | general production evaluation | reasoning-heavy apps |
| Decision fit | Classification | Long context |
| Context window | 4k | 128k |
| Cheapest output | - | - |
| Provider routes | 1 tracked | 1 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 0 shared | 0 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Local decision data tags Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control for Classification.
- Magistral Small 2506 has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Magistral Small 2506 uniquely exposes Reasoning in local model data.
- Local decision data tags Magistral Small 2506 for Long context.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control
Unavailable
No complete token price in local provider data
Magistral Small 2506
Unavailable
No complete token price in local provider data
Cost delta unavailable until both models have sourced input and output token prices.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on NVIDIA NIM; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Magistral Small 2506 adds Reasoning in local capability data.
- Provider overlap exists on NVIDIA NIM; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Check replacement coverage for Reasoning before moving production traffic.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2025-01-01 | 2025-06-10 |
| Context window | 4k | 128k |
| Parameters | 8B | 24B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Decoder Only |
| License | Open Weights | Apache 2.0OSI-approved |
| Openness | Open weights | Open source |
| Weights | Unknown | Unknown |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | - | Commercial use: permitted |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | 2025-06 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control | Magistral Small 2506 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | - | - |
| Output price | - | - |
| Providers |
Pricing not yet sourced for either model.
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control | Magistral Small 2506 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | No |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | Yes |
| JSON / Tool use | No | No |
| Structured outputs | No | No |
| Code execution | No | No |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
No shared benchmark scores are currently available for this pair.
Continue comparing
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Phi-4 Mini Flash Reasoning
- Magistral Small 2506 vs Mistral Medium 3.5
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Llama Guard 2 8B
- Magistral Small 2506 vs Mistral Medium 3 Instruct
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Llama 3.1 Swallow 8B Instruct
- Magistral Small 2506 vs Mistral Magistral Small 2509
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs ShieldGemma 9B
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Marin 8B Instruct
Popular comparisons for Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Llama Guard 2 8B
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Llama 3.1 Swallow 8B Instruct
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs ShieldGemma 9B
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Marin 8B Instruct
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Llama 3.1 Nemotron Nano VL 8B v1
- Llama 3.1 NemoGuard 8B Topic Control vs Qwen2-7B-Instruct
Popular comparisons for Magistral Small 2506
Last reviewed: 2026-05-22. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.