Model comparison
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite vs Mistral Small 3
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
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Mistral AISummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher in 7 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads 56.8 to 32.2.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.40 for Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite.
- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | |
| Noometry Index | 37.0 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2025-06-17 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1.05M | 33K |
| Max output | 66K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.10 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.40 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 33 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.5 (#173), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1373 | 1246 |
| WeirdML | 35.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 325.9 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 28.0 (#96), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 36.9% | — |
Reasoning Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 22.2 (#205), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1377 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.94 | 127.07 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 40.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | 62.8% | — |
| LMCA | 18.1% | — |
Math Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.0 (#144), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1373 | 1240 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 6.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 48% | — |
Knowledge Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 32.5 (#210), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1373 | 1202 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.3% |
| MMLU-Pro | 53.7% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 3.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.9% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 29.1 (#114), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1198 | — |
| VPCT | 30% | — |
Multilingual Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 49.3 (#134), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1369 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1404 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1388 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1389 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1359 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1360 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1396 | — |
Instruction Following Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 70.0 (#168), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1367 | 1214 |
| IFEval | 81% | — |
Long Context Mistral Small 3 leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 33.3 (#262), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1373 | 1246 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 47.2% | — |
Writing & Preference Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 56.8 (#135), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1379 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1367 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1366 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| WildBench | 81.8% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite better than Mistral Small 3?
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite lists at $0.10 and $0.40.
Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.5 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and Mistral Small 3 share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite has 33 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.