Model comparison

DeepSeek-V3 vs Mistral Small 3.2

DeepSeek-V3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.5 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-V3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.

DeepSeek-V3 DeepSeek

39.5

Rank #166 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.2 Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #280 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-V3 scores higher in 4 categories and Mistral Small 3.2 in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in writing & preference, where DeepSeek-V3 leads 57.4 to 45.0.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 67.6% for DeepSeek-V3 and 49.1% for Mistral Small 3.2.
  • Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper at $0.0938 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.24 / $0.90 for DeepSeek-V3.
  • Mistral Small 3.2 accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 164K.

Side by side

DeepSeek-V3 and Mistral Small 3.2 specifications
DeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
ProviderDeepSeekMistral AI
Noometry Index39.531.2
Released2024-12-262025-06-20
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window164K256K
Max output164K16K
Input $ / M tokens$0.24$0.0938
Output $ / M tokens$0.90$0.25
Results tracked606

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: 42.3 (#106), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
Aider Polyglot55.1%—
SciCode35.8%—
WeirdML36.1%—
BigCodeBench Instruct50%—
LiveBench Coding70.9%—
LMArena Coding1368—
BigCodeBench Complete62.2%—
HumanEval+86.6%—
MBPP+73%—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: —, Mistral Small 3.2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
METR Time Horizons49.6%—

Reasoning DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 20.5 (#236), Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
Kagi LLM Benchmark52.3%40.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index135.94131.74
SimpleBench27.2%—
CritPt0%—
Chess Puzzles—1%
LiveBench Reasoning65.8%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1365—
DTBench64.8%—
LiveBench Data Analysis60.9%—
LMCA15.5%—
BIG-Bench Hard87.5%—
ForecastBench59.1—
HellaSwag88.9%—
LiveBench66.9%—
PIQA84.7%—
WinoGrande85.2%—

Math DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 32.1 (#219), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202537.8%30.3%
Omni-MATH40.3%—
LiveBench Math73.5%—
LMArena Math1373—
MATH Level 575.5%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)1.7%—

Knowledge DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 37.5 (#155), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
GPQA Diamond67.6%49.1%
MMLU-Pro72.3%—
Confabulations26.1%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate6.1%—
GPQA (HELM)53.8%—
LMArena Expert1351—
ARC (AI2) Challenge95.3%—
MMLU87.2%—
TriviaQA82.9%—

Multilingual Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: 48.5 (#143), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Non-English1358—
LMArena Chinese1391—
LMArena French1385—
LMArena German1374—
LMArena Japanese1333—
LMArena Korean1319—
LMArena Russian1373—
LMArena Spanish1358—

Instruction Following Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: 72.8 (#130), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
LiveBench Instruction Following81.5%—
IFEval83.2%—
LMArena Instruction Following1345—

Long Context Not comparable

DeepSeek-V3: 34.0 (#253), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
Fiction.LiveBench50%—
LMArena Longer Query1352—

Writing & Preference DeepSeek-V3 leads

DeepSeek-V3: 57.4 (#130), Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkDeepSeek-V3Mistral Small 3.2
EQ-Bench Creative Writing14721255
LMArena Text1375—
LMArena Creative Writing1364—
Short-Story Creative Writing77%—
WildBench83%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1389—
LiveBench Language49.1%—

Frequently asked questions

Is DeepSeek-V3 better than Mistral Small 3.2?

DeepSeek-V3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.5 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-V3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-V3 or Mistral Small 3.2?

Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.0938 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; DeepSeek-V3 lists at $0.24 and $0.90.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Small 3.2 does, with 256K tokens against 164K.

How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-V3 and Mistral Small 3.2 share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-V3 has 60 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.2 has 6.

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