Llama Guard 3 1B vs Mistral Magistral Small 2509
Llama Guard 3 1B (2024) and Mistral Magistral Small 2509 (2025) are compact production models from AI at Meta and MistralAI. Llama Guard 3 1B ships a 128k-token context window, while Mistral Magistral Small 2509 ships a not-yet-sourced context window. On pricing, Llama Guard 3 1B costs $0.10/1M input tokens versus $0.50/1M for the alternative. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Llama Guard 3 1B is ~400% cheaper at $0.10/1M; pay for Mistral Magistral Small 2509 only for provider fit.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama Guard 3 1B | Mistral Magistral Small 2509 |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | general production evaluation | provider-routed production |
| Decision fit | Long context and Classification | General |
| Context window | 128k | — |
| Cheapest output | $0.10/1M tokens | $1.50/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 1 tracked | 2 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 0 shared | 0 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Llama Guard 3 1B has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Llama Guard 3 1B has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $0.10/1M tokens.
- Local decision data tags Llama Guard 3 1B for Long context and Classification.
- Mistral Magistral Small 2509 has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Llama Guard 3 1B
$105
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Fireworks AI
Mistral Magistral Small 2509
$775
Cheapest tracked route/tier: AWS Bedrock
Estimated monthly gap: $670. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- No overlapping tracked provider route is sourced for Llama Guard 3 1B and Mistral Magistral Small 2509; plan for SDK, billing, or endpoint changes.
- Mistral Magistral Small 2509 is $1.40/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
- No overlapping tracked provider route is sourced for Mistral Magistral Small 2509 and Llama Guard 3 1B; plan for SDK, billing, or endpoint changes.
- Llama Guard 3 1B is $1.40/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2024-09-25 | 2025-09-01 |
| Context window | 128k | — |
| Parameters | 1B | 24B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | - |
| License | Llama 2 Community | Apache 2.0OSI-approved |
| Openness | Open weights | Open source |
| Weights | Unknown | Unknown |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: permitted |
| Knowledge cutoff | 2023-12 | - |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama Guard 3 1B | Mistral Magistral Small 2509 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.10/1M tokens | $0.50/1M tokens |
| Output price | $0.10/1M tokens | $1.50/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama Guard 3 1B | Mistral Magistral Small 2509 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | No |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | No |
| 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
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-09. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.