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

Kronos vs Mistral Large 4

Kronos and Mistral Large 4 score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.2 (C) and 54.6 (C). Mistral Large 4 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 3588 open weights comparisons

Which one, for what

Kronos C

Best for Agents that need a quick local forecast or synthetic sample of a candlestick series on modest hardware, for research or as one input among others.

Ahead on

  • Reach, 55 against 50

Watch for

Runs only through the publisher's own PyTorch code from GitHub, in no named runtime and with no quantised build

Mistral Large 4 C

Best for Operators with an 8-GPU Blackwell or H200 node who want a frontier-sized open model for coding agents and defensive security, with a hosted twin on Mistral's API.

Ahead on

  • Risk, 75 against 50
  • Agent interface, 95 against 60

Watch for

The smallest 4-bit build needs about 732 GB, so nothing fits a single workstation or a 128 GB machine

Score by category

CategoryWeight this runKronosMistral Large 4Edge
Capability35%pendingpendingpendingnot scored in this run
Reach25%255550Kronos +5
Risk20%205075Mistral Large 4 +25
Agent interface10%106095Mistral Large 4 +35
Documentation and upkeep10%106164Mistral Large 4 +3
Negative events≤1500
TotalC 55.2/100C 54.6/100

Facts side by side

FactKronosMistral Large 4
KindOpen-weight modelOpen-weight model
VendorYu Shi (shiyu-coder, NeoQuasar), Tsinghua UniversityMistral AI
Hosted endpointno (local only)no (local only)
Transports
AuthNoneNone
PricingFreeFree
x402nono
LicenceMITMistral Ecosystem Open-Weight License (modified MIT)
Read-only variant documentednono
llms.txtnono
Last release2026-04-132026-10-29
Terms last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Privacy policy last updatedno document linkedno document linked
Customer content may train models
Terms restrict automated access
Terms restrict benchmarking
Terms or service can change without notice
Arbitration or class-action waiver
Popularity43k starsnone

Verdicts

Kronos

Forecasts the next price bars from a history of up to 512 candlestick bars. Every size fits in under 0.5 GB and runs on a CPU, but only through the publisher's own Python package. Nobody has benchmarked it independently, its quickstart data was deleted from the repository, and the publisher hasn't replied since November 2025.

Mistral Large 4

A frontier-sized open cousin for coding agents and defensive security, with strict JSON Schema output, parallel tool calls and three reasoning efforts. It needs a multi-GPU server, about 732 GB for the smallest 4-bit build, and vLLM and SGLang run it only from special images. The main risk is a licence that bars Model-as-a-Service businesses without a separate deal.

Before you call either

Kronos

  1. Clone https://github.com/shiyu-coder/Kronos and pip install -r requirements.txt, then load Kronos.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-small") and KronosTokenizer.from_pretrained("NeoQuasar/Kronos-Tokenizer-base") and wrap them in KronosPredictor
  2. Pair Kronos-mini with Kronos-Tokenizer-2k and Kronos-small or Kronos-base with Kronos-Tokenizer-base, the cards' pairing
  3. The examples read examples/data/XSHG_5min_600977.csv, which no longer exists; point them at tests/data/regression_input.csv, 2,500 five-minute bars
  4. Keep the lookback at or under max_context, 512 bars, and pass the future timestamps you want as y_timestamp, since the calendar fields come from them
  5. Raise sample_count for a steadier forecast, but expect only the mean back; call the lower-level auto_regressive_inference yourself if you need the paths
  6. Treat forecasts as model output to check, not signals; the README says its own backtest pipeline isn't a production trading system

Mistral Large 4

  1. Serve the NVFP4 build on Blackwell with vllm/vllm-openai:mistral-large-4 --model mistralai/Mistral-Large-4-1T-A52B-NVFP4 --tensor-parallel-size 8 --kv-cache-dtype fp8_ds_mla --tool-call-parser mistral --reasoning-parser mistral --enable-auto-tool-choice; released vLLM doesn't load it
  2. On H200 use the FP8 build with tensor parallelism of 16 or 8 by 2 pipelines, per vLLM's recipe
  3. Pass reasoning_effort low, medium or high (default high); any other value makes the template raise an error, and there is no off switch
  4. Read the reasoning from message.reasoning; max_completion_tokens counts reasoning tokens too
  5. Use temperature 1.0 and top_p 0.95 at every effort, per the card
  6. Ask for JSON with response_format type json_schema and strict true; the template passes the schema to the model
  7. The template rejects a tool message straight after a user message and a conversation that doesn't start with a user or system message
  8. Add --speculative-config '{"method": "dspark", "num_speculative_tokens": 3}' to use the embedded draft head
  9. If you'll offer it to others as a hosted model, read the licence first; Model-as-a-Service use needs Mistral's commercial licence

Questions

Which is better for AI agents, Kronos or Mistral Large 4?

Kronos and Mistral Large 4 score within a point of each other on agent readiness, 55.2 (C) and 54.6 (C). Mistral Large 4 leads on risk and agent interface.

Other comparisons with Kronos or Mistral Large 4

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