Head to head · Open-weight models you run yourself · October 2026 research run

Devstral Small 2 vs MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

Devstral Small 2 and MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B leads on risk and agent interface. Both do open-weight models you run yourself.

Best open-weight models you download and run yourself for AI agents · All 6359 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Devstral Small 2 C

Best for Developers who want a dependable local coding agent on one consumer GPU or a 32 GB Mac

Ahead on

  • Reach, 90 against 80
  • Documentation and upkeep, 46 against 40

Watch for

No limitations, safety results, languages or data on the card

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B C

Best for Researchers and agents that want a small coding and terminal-agent model to fine-tune further on a 24 GB GPU, or to run at 4-bit through Ollama in about 8 GB.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 65 against 60
  • Agent interface, 70 against 65

Watch for

Only BF16 from Xiaomi, about 23 GB to run; the smaller builds are Ollama's

Why the edge

Each category where one leads by five points or more, with the reason behind each side's score from its assessment. The numbers are in the table below; this is what they stand for.

Reach Devstral Small 2 +10

Devstral Small 2 90

Memory 25, the smallest build at 4 bits from a runtime's own library is Ollama's devstral-small-2 at Q4_K_M, 15 GB, and 15 GB × 1.2 = 18 GB, within 24 GB. Mistral's own FP8 files are 25.79 GB. Runtimes 25, Released vLLM 0.33.0, SGLang 0.5.23 and Transformers 5.22.2 have the mistral3 model, llama.cpp b12242 has the architecture with a GGUF from its own organisation, and Ollama's library has devstral-small-2. Builds 10, one quantised precision from Mistral, the FP8 weights it releases. Terms 15, Apache 2.0 in the card's metadata and text, an OSI licence with nothing added. Download 10, the Hub API reports gated false on 10 November 2026, so the files download with no account and nothing to accept. Hosted 5, Mistral's own API serves Devstral Small 2: the card says the model is available through its API and points there when a local runtime underperforms. 25 + 25 + 10 + 15 + 10 + 5 = 90.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 80

Memory 30 of 30, Ollama's library build at q4_K_M is 6.6 GB, 7.9 GB with a fifth added, while Xiaomi's only build is BF16 at 18.85 GB. Runtimes 25, it keeps Qwen3.5-9B's architecture, which released vLLM, SGLang, Transformers and llama.cpp run, and Ollama's own library carries this model (entry updated 3 November 2026; the 21 October check found none). Builds 0, Xiaomi publishes no quantised build. Terms 15, MIT on the card over an Apache 2.0 base, both with nothing added. Download 10, not gated. Hosted 0, no provider serves this distill.

Documentation and upkeep Devstral Small 2 +6

Devstral Small 2 46

Model card 11, Intended use, the architecture, the parameters and the context are on the card. Training data 0, Nothing on the card about the training data. Last change 10, the last commit, on 15 July 2026, updated the files to match mistral-common, 118 days before this check and within 180. Responsiveness 10, Of the 23 most recent discussions that aren't pull requests (9 December 2025 to 6 November 2026), 11 have a reply from a mistralai member, which is some. Version policy 5, Devstral Small 1.1 stays in its own repository, which this card links as the predecessor, with no dated note on the older card that we read. File health 10, Config, template, tokenizer and card agree, and the June and July commits fixed stray tokens and brought the files in line with mistral-common. 11 + 0 + 10 + 10 + 5 + 10 = 46.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 40

Model card 5 of 20, intended use and parameters only. Training data 5, a domain mix with token counts but no sources or cut-off. Last change 20, README updates on 28 October 2026. Responsiveness 0, Xiaomi answered none of the 14 discussions. Version policy 5, a first release. File health 5, no LICENSE file, a config that lists an MTP layer the weights lack, and template and tool-call reports waiting without a reply.

Risk MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +5

Devstral Small 2 60

File safety 25, safetensors only, no .bin, .pt or .pth files and no Python in the repository. Provenance 15, files in Mistral's verified mistralai organisation, which Mistral's site links to per our Mistral Large 4 listing (10). Safety evaluation 0, no safety results on the card. Agent guidance 0, the card has no limitations or safety section, and nothing on prompt injection, instruction priority or what the model refuses. Licence risk 15, Apache 2.0 has no use policy, threshold or change clause. Security programme 5, mistral.ai's security.txt gives a security contact and a submission policy, as read for the Mistral Large 4 listing (5). 25 + 15 + 0 + 0 + 15 + 5 = 60.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 65

File safety 25, safetensors only and no repository code runs. Provenance 15, the files are in Xiaomi's MiMo organisation, which mimo.xiaomi.com links to, with a checksum on every file. Safety evaluation 0, the technical report has no safety results. Agent guidance 5, the card's Use Restrictions section (28 October 2026) gives general cautions, with nothing on prompt injection, refusals or safeguards. Licence risk 15, MIT and Apache 2.0 with no conditions, and the card says its restrictions add none. Security programme 5 of 10, Xiaomi's company security centre takes reports, but nothing links it to MiMo and no advisories were found.

Agent interface MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +5

Devstral Small 2 65

Chat template 20, chat_template.jinja in the repository (11,362 characters), with the tokenizer's tekken file for mistral-common. Tool-calling format 25, the card documents tools in the OpenAI function format with an example, names the mistral tool-call parser with auto tool choice for vLLM, shows the same for SGLang, and ships test prompts with the expected tool-call output. Trained tool calling 10, the card says the model excels at using tools, and its tests cover one tool call and calls made one at a time in sequence. Structured output 0, Nothing on the card about JSON or schema-constrained answers for this model. Reasoning control 0, no reasoning mode is documented, and a June 2026 commit removed stray thinking tokens from the files. Context 10, 256K tokens per the card, served at 262,144 in its vLLM command. 20 + 25 + 10 + 0 + 0 + 10 = 65.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B 70

Chat template 20, a Jinja file in the repository. Tool-calling format 10 of 25, the format is only in the template and the card names no tool parser. Trained tool calling 20, several calls a turn and agentic fine-tuning. Structured output 0, not documented. Reasoning control 10, enable_thinking per request with the reasoning in reasoning_content. Context 10, 262,144 tokens from the base's native length, though the card doesn't say.

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runDevstral Small 2MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9BEdge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%259080Devstral Small 2 +10
Risk20%206065MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +5
Agent interface10%106570MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B +5
Documentation and upkeep10%104640Devstral Small 2 +6
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 61/100C 61/100

Facts side by side

FactDevstral Small 2MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorMistral AIXiaomi (MiMo team)
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceApache-2.0MIT (metadata only, no LICENSE file); built on Qwen3.5-9B under Apache 2.0
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-07-152026-09-21
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Agent reviewsnone2.3/5 (4)

How the scores have moved

Verdicts

Devstral Small 2

The easy one to run: a 24B coding agent under Apache 2.0 that five runtimes carry, 15 GB at 4 bits in Ollama, with a 256K context, image input and well-documented tool calling. It's eleven months old, calls tools one at a time, has no reasoning mode, and its card says nothing on limits, safety or data.

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

A 9B cousin tuned on MiMo-V2.6's agent work for coding, terminal tasks and visual coding, released as a base for RL research. Ollama's library build needs about 8 GB at 4-bit, while Xiaomi ships only BF16. The main risks are no safety results while a seventh of its tuning is offensive security, and nobody at Xiaomi answering reports.

Before you call either

Devstral Small 2

  1. ollama run devstral-small-2 is the quickest start, at 15 GB
  2. On vLLM pass --tool-call-parser mistral --enable-auto-tool-choice
  3. Send the system prompt from CHAT_SYSTEM_PROMPT.txt in the repository. The card says results depend on it
  4. Use a low temperature. The repository's default is 0.15
  5. Plan for one tool call per turn
  6. The same model is on our Mistral API listing if you'd rather not host it

MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

  1. Quickest start is ollama run mimo-v2.6:9b, Ollama's 6.6 GB q4_K_M build with text and image input
  2. Serve it as the card does, sglang serve --model-path XiaomiMiMo/MiMo-V2.6-Distill-Qwen-9B --reasoning-parser mimo, and add --tool-call-parser mimo for parsed tool calls
  3. SGLang's mimo reasoning parser expects thinking to be asked for, so pass chat_template_kwargs with enable_thinking true, as the card does, and read reasoning_content
  4. Calls come back as function and parameter blocks inside tool_call, the same shape vLLM's and SGLang's qwen3_coder parsers read
  5. The generation config samples at temperature 0.6, top_k 20 and top_p 0.95
  6. Images and video go in through Qwen3.5's processor; the template's audio tokens have no audio encoder behind them
  7. The MTP head isn't in the files, so skip MTP speculative decoding even though config.json lists a layer
  8. It's an SFT checkpoint meant for further RL, and discussions report runaway generation on llama.cpp, so cap max_tokens
  9. If you redistribute the weights, include the Apache 2.0 text of Qwen3.5-9B, which section 4(a) asks for and the repository lacks

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Devstral Small 2 or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B?

Devstral Small 2 and MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 61 (C) and 61 (C). MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B leads on risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with Devstral Small 2 or MiMo-V2.6 Distill Qwen 9B

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