Llama Guard 4 12B vs Magistral Small 2506
Llama Guard 4 12B (2025) and Magistral Small 2506 (2025) are frontier reasoning models from AI at Meta and MistralAI. Llama Guard 4 12B ships a 164k-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 is safer overall; choose Llama Guard 4 12B when long-context analysis matters.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Llama Guard 4 12B | Magistral Small 2506 |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | provider-routed production | reasoning-heavy apps |
| Decision fit | RAG, Long context, and Classification | Long context |
| Context window | 164k | 128k |
| Cheapest output | $0.18/1M tokens | - |
| Provider routes | 3 tracked | 1 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 0 shared | 0 shared |
Decision tradeoffs
- Llama Guard 4 12B has the larger context window for long prompts, retrieval packs, or transcript analysis.
- Llama Guard 4 12B has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
- Llama Guard 4 12B uniquely exposes Structured outputs in local model data.
- Local decision data tags Llama Guard 4 12B for RAG, Long context, and Classification.
- 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 Guard 4 12B
$189
Cheapest tracked route/tier: OpenRouter
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.
- Check replacement coverage for Structured outputs before moving production traffic.
- 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.
- Llama Guard 4 12B adds Structured outputs in local capability data.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2025-04-05 | 2025-06-10 |
| Context window | 164k | 128k |
| Parameters | 12B | 24B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | 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 | 2024-08 | 2025-06 |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Llama Guard 4 12B | Magistral Small 2506 |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.18/1M tokens | - |
| Output price | $0.18/1M tokens | - |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Llama Guard 4 12B | Magistral Small 2506 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | No | No |
| Multimodal | No | No |
| Reasoning | No | Yes |
| JSON / Tool use | No | No |
| Structured outputs | Yes | 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.
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Last reviewed: 2026-07-09. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.