Model comparison

Gemma 3 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1

Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.7 to 28.1 on the Noometry Index. Gemma 3 4B costs 8.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small 3.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 11, 2026. 17 shared benchmarks.

Gemma 3 4B

Google

28.1

Rank #326 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.1

Mistral AI

31.7

Rank #269 Confirmed

Summary

They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemma 3 4B scores higher in 4 categories and Mistral Small 3.1 in 4 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small 3.1 leads 22.6 to 11.8.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 23.2% for Gemma 3 4B and 41.9% for Mistral Small 3.1.
Gemma 3 4B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.35 / $0.56 for Mistral Small 3.1.
Gemma 3 4B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Gemma 3 4B and Mistral Small 3.1 specifications
	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
Provider	Google	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	28.1	31.7
Released	2025-03-12	2025-03-17
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	128K
Max output	4K	102K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.04	$0.35
Output $ / M tokens	$0.08	$0.56
Results tracked	22	28

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 35.9 (#215), Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
LMArena Coding	1230	1309

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Gemma 3 4B: 20.9 (#142), Mistral Small 3.1: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	19.6%	—

Reasoning Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 13.2 (#335), Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
Chess Puzzles	0%	1%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1253	1278
Epoch Capabilities Index	116.02	127.48
Kagi LLM Benchmark	25.2%	—
DTBench	50.9%	—
LMCA	2.8%	—

Math Gemma 3 4B leads

Gemma 3 4B: 16.8 (#292), Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	7.5%	3.9%
LMArena Math	1239	1262
Omni-MATH	—	24.8%

Knowledge Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Gemma 3 4B: 11.8 (#299), Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
GPQA Diamond	23.2%	41.9%
LMArena Expert	1223	1257
MMLU-Pro	—	61%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	6.4%	—
GPQA (HELM)	—	39.2%

Multimodal Not comparable

Gemma 3 4B: —, Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
LMArena Vision	—	1136

Multilingual Gemma 3 4B leads

Gemma 3 4B: 42.5 (#194), Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
LMArena Non-English	1273	1255
LMArena German	1281	1266
LMArena Russian	1294	1263
LMArena Chinese	—	1253
LMArena French	—	1273
LMArena Japanese	—	1208
LMArena Korean	—	1206
LMArena Spanish	—	1283

Instruction Following Gemma 3 4B leads

Gemma 3 4B: 65.2 (#225), Mistral Small 3.1: 63.6 (#230)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
LMArena Instruction Following	1239	1264
IFEval	—	75%

Long Context Too close to call

Gemma 3 4B: 38.7 (#194), Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
LMArena Longer Query	1273	1299

Writing & Preference Gemma 3 4B leads

Gemma 3 4B: 42.0 (#239), Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Gemma 3 4B	Mistral Small 3.1
LMArena Text	1291	1277
LMArena Creative Writing	1271	1253
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1068	761
LMArena Multi-Turn	1255	1270
WildBench	—	78.8%

Frequently asked questions

Is Gemma 3 4B better than Mistral Small 3.1?

Which is cheaper, Gemma 3 4B or Mistral Small 3.1?

Gemma 3 4B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3.1 lists at $0.35 and $0.56.

Is Gemma 3 4B or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.3 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Gemma 3 4B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Gemma 3 4B and Mistral Small 3.1 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemma 3 4B has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.