Model comparison
Gemma 3 4B vs Mistral Small
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 4B costs 5.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 19 shared benchmarks.
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Mistral AISummary
- They share 19 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 4B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small leads 31.0 to 11.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 23.2% for Gemma 3 4B and 47.5% for Mistral Small.
- Gemma 3 4B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | |
| Noometry Index | 28.1 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2025-03-12 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Max output | 4K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.08 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Gemma 3 4B leads
Gemma 3 4B: 35.9 (#215), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1230 | 1362 |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |
Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 20.9 (#142), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 19.6% | 37.1% |
Reasoning Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 13.2 (#335), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 25.2% | 37.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1253 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 50.9% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 2.8% | 20.6% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 116.02 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Too close to call
Gemma 3 4B: 16.8 (#292), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 7.5% | 5.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1239 | 1341 |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |
Knowledge Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 11.8 (#299), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 23.2% | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.4% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | 1291 |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Gemma 3 4B: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |
Multilingual Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 42.5 (#194), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1273 | 1315 |
| LMArena German | 1281 | 1340 |
| LMArena Russian | 1294 | 1324 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1340 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1259 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |
Instruction Following Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 65.2 (#225), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1239 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
Long Context Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 38.7 (#194), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1273 | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Small leads
Gemma 3 4B: 42.0 (#239), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
| Benchmark | Gemma 3 4B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1291 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1271 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1255 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1068 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Gemma 3 4B better than Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 4B costs 5.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 4B or Mistral Small?
Gemma 3 4B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.
Is Gemma 3 4B or Mistral Small better for coding?
Gemma 3 4B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 4B and Mistral Small share?
19 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 4B has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.