diff --git a/sacrebleu/metrics/base.py b/sacrebleu/metrics/base.py
index 8aa693a..6a50631 100644
--- a/sacrebleu/metrics/base.py
+++ b/sacrebleu/metrics/base.py
@@ -396,6 +396,12 @@ def _extract_corpus_statistics(
         else:
             raise RuntimeError("No references provided and the cache is empty.")
 
+        if len(hypotheses) != len(ref_cache):
+            raise TypeError(
+                f"{self.__class__.__name__}: The reference cache must have the "
+                "same length as `hypotheses`."
+            )
+
         stats = []
         tok_count = 0
 
diff --git a/test/test_metrics_base.py b/test/test_metrics_base.py
index 679ec71..713d76b 100644
--- a/test/test_metrics_base.py
+++ b/test/test_metrics_base.py
@@ -2,7 +2,9 @@
 
 import pytest
 
+from sacrebleu.metrics import BLEU, CHRF, TER
 from sacrebleu.metrics.base import Metric
+from sacrebleu.significance import PairedTest
 
 
 class ConcreteTestMetric(Metric):
@@ -353,3 +355,56 @@ def test_check_corpus_score_args(hyps, refs, expected_context):
     metric = ConcreteTestMetric()
     with expected_context:
         metric._check_corpus_score_args(hyps=hyps, refs=refs)
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("metric_type", [BLEU, CHRF, TER])
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("hyp_count", [1, 3])
+def test_cached_corpus_rejects_length_mismatch(metric_type, hyp_count):
+    metric = metric_type(references=[["one two three four"] * 2])
+    with pytest.raises(TypeError, match="same length"):
+        metric.corpus_score(["one two three four"] * hyp_count, None)
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("metric_type", [BLEU, CHRF, TER])
+def test_cached_corpus_matches_explicit_references(metric_type):
+    refs = [
+        ["one two three four", "five six seven eight"],
+        ["one two three five", None],
+    ]
+    hyps = ["one two three four", "five six seven nine"]
+    metric = metric_type(references=refs)
+    expected = metric_type().corpus_score(hyps, refs).score
+    assert metric.corpus_score(hyps, None).score == pytest.approx(expected)
+
+    # Explicit references take precedence over a differently sized cache.
+    assert metric.corpus_score(hyps[:1], [refs[0][:1]]).score == pytest.approx(
+        metric_type().corpus_score(hyps[:1], [refs[0][:1]]).score
+    )
+    assert metric.sentence_score(hyps[0], [refs[0][0]]).score == pytest.approx(
+        metric_type().sentence_score(hyps[0], [refs[0][0]]).score
+    )
+    assert metric.corpus_score(hyps, None).score == pytest.approx(expected)
+
+
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("test_type", ["bs", "ar"])
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("mismatched_system", ["baseline", "candidate"])
+@pytest.mark.parametrize("n_jobs", [1, 2])
+def test_paired_test_rejects_cached_length_mismatch(
+    test_type, mismatched_system, n_jobs
+):
+    refs = [["one two three four", "five six seven eight"]]
+    systems = [("baseline", refs[0].copy()), ("candidate", refs[0].copy())]
+    for name, hypotheses in systems:
+        if name == mismatched_system:
+            hypotheses.append("this extra sentence must not be discarded")
+
+    with pytest.raises(TypeError, match="same length"):
+        PairedTest(
+            systems,
+            {"BLEU": BLEU(references=refs)},
+            references=None,
+            test_type=test_type,
+            n_samples=10,
+            n_ar_confidence=-1,
+            n_jobs=n_jobs,
+        )()