Model comparison

GPT-3.5-turbo vs Mistral Small 3

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 23.2 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 23 shared benchmarks.

GPT-3.5-turbo OpenAI

23.2

Rank #350 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3

Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #278 Confirmed

Summary

They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-3.5-turbo scores higher in 0 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small 3 leads 25.1 to 10.0.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 28% for GPT-3.5-turbo and 47.3% for Mistral Small 3.
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for GPT-3.5-turbo.
Mistral Small 3 accepts more context: 33K tokens versus 16K.
Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-3.5-turbo and Mistral Small 3 specifications
	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
Provider	OpenAI	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	23.2	31.2
Released	2023-03-01	2025-01-30
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	16K	33K
Max output	4K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.50	$0.05
Output $ / M tokens	$1.50	$0.08
Results tracked	44	24

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 23.9 (#331), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
BigCodeBench Instruct	39.1%	45.3%
LMArena Coding	1136	1246
BigCodeBench Complete	50.6%	50.4%
WeirdML	3.5%	—
HumanEval+	70.7%	—
MBPP+	69.7%	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-3.5-turbo: —, Mistral Small 3: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
METR Time Horizons	21.5%	—

Reasoning Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 13.8 (#332), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
Chess Puzzles	0%	0%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1108	1233
Epoch Capabilities Index	118.55	127.07
Mystery Game Puzzles	3%	—
DTBench	48.5%	—
LMCA	9.7%	—
Adversarial NLI	58.1%	—
BIG-Bench Hard	61.6%	—
CommonsenseQA 2.0	57%	—
ForecastBench	50.4	—
WinoGrande	81.6%	—

Math Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 6.3 (#327), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	2.2%	6.7%
LMArena Math	1142	1240
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	0%	—
MATH Level 5	15.9%	—
GSM8K	57.8%	—

Knowledge Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 10.0 (#303), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
GPQA Diamond	28%	47.3%
LMArena Expert	1070	1202
Confabulations	—	25.2%
ARC (AI2) Challenge	87.4%	—
BoolQ	87%	—
MMLU	71.4%	—
OpenBookQA	86%	—
TriviaQA	85.8%	—

Multilingual Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 31.5 (#258), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
LMArena Non-English	1108	1198
LMArena Chinese	1075	1204
LMArena French	1118	1203
LMArena German	1090	1211
LMArena Japanese	1043	1111
LMArena Korean	1019	1188
LMArena Russian	1123	1216
LMArena Spanish	1121	—

Instruction Following Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 57.9 (#262), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
LMArena Instruction Following	1119	1214

Long Context Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 34.0 (#254), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
LMArena Longer Query	1121	1246

Writing & Preference Mistral Small 3 leads

GPT-3.5-turbo: 25.3 (#305), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-3.5-turbo	Mistral Small 3
LMArena Text	1125	1234
LMArena Creative Writing	1092	1195
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	451	707
LMArena Multi-Turn	1117	1217

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-3.5-turbo better than Mistral Small 3?

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 23.2 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, GPT-3.5-turbo 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; GPT-3.5-turbo lists at $0.50 and $1.50.

Is GPT-3.5-turbo or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 23.9 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Small 3 does, with 33K tokens against 16K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-3.5-turbo and Mistral Small 3 share?

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-3.5-turbo has 44 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.