Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 vs Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free): Live Promos, Pricing, Hidden Fees & Latency
Verified 2026 FinOps benchmark comparing Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (mistralai/ministral-8b-2512) vs Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free). Simulate cache read multipliers, context cliffs, MAU bills, and P90 latency.
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (mistralai/ministral-8b-2512) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512: Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0.075/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free) 2026 Q4 Developer Promotion & Volume Credits
Official 2026 Q4 promotion for Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free): Activate ephemeral prefix caching to slash input costs by 50% (down to $0/1M) or route via asynchronous Batch API for 50% off standard token rates.
In Etuki October 2026 FinOps telemetry comparing Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (API ID: mistralai/ministral-8b-2512) vs Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) (API ID: poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free), Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) offers lower standard input pricing at $0/1M tokens ($0/1M output), while Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) leads in cached prefix economics at $0/1M tokens (50% discount). Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 achieves a 0ms faster P90 time-to-first-token latency (280ms vs 280ms).
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
Auto-discovered via live global telemetry registry.
| Specification / FinOps Dimension | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) | Verified Advantage |
|---|---|---|---|
| Official Vendor API ID | mistralai/ministral-8b-2512 | poolside/laguna-xs-2.1:free | Pinned Snapshot IDs |
| Standard Input / Output (per 1M) | $0.15 / $0.15 | $0 / $0 | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) |
| Cache Read Price (per 1M) | $0.075/1M (50% Off) | $0/1M (50% Off) | Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free) |
| Context Window / Max Output | 256K In / 205K Out | 256K In / 32K Out | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 |
| P90 First-Token / Edge Latency | 280ms | 280ms | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (-0ms) |
A balanced model in the Ministral 3 family, Ministral 3 8B is a powerful, efficient tiny language model with vision capabilities.
Laguna XS 2.1 is the latest coding agent model in the 33B-A3B category from [Poolside](https://poolside.ai/) and a step forward from their Laguna XS.2 model (released in April 2026
Real-Time Stack Cost & Hidden-Fee Simulator (MAU / Token / Egress / GMV)
Calibrated with Reddit r/FinOps & r/devops telemetry: Includes Context Caching, Bandwidth Egress, and MoR Tax
🛰️Switch from Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 to Poolside: Laguna XS 2.1 (free)
Laguna XS 2.1 is the latest coding agent model in the 33B-A3B category from [Poolside](https://poolside.ai/) and a step forward from their Laguna XS.2 model (released in April 2026 Verified P90 latency of 280ms.