Model comparison

GPT-4.1 vs Mistral Small 3.2

GPT-4.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.9 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 26× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 6 shared benchmarks.

GPT-4.1 OpenAI

35.9

Rank #219 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.2

Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #280 Confirmed

Summary

They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small 3.2 in 2 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where GPT-4.1 leads 57.6 to 45.0.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 66.9% for GPT-4.1 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 $2 / $8 for GPT-4.1.
GPT-4.1 accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 256K.
Mistral Small 3.2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-4.1 and Mistral Small 3.2 specifications
	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
Provider	OpenAI	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	35.9	31.2
Released	2025-04-14	2025-06-20
Weights	Proprietary	Open
Context window	1.05M	256K
Max output	33K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$2	$0.0938
Output $ / M tokens	$8	$0.25
Results tracked	52	6

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 34.4 (#238), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
SWE-bench Verified	48.5%	—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)	39.6%	—
Aider Polyglot	52.4%	—
WeirdML	39%	—
LMArena Coding	1391	—
CadEval	42%	—
ALE-Bench	558.1	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 34.7 (#43), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	54%	—

Reasoning Mistral Small 3.2 leads

GPT-4.1: 11.7 (#339), Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
Kagi LLM Benchmark	52.3%	40.4%
Chess Puzzles	6%	1%
Epoch Capabilities Index	136.78	131.74
ARC-AGI-2	0.4%	—
SimpleBench	27%	—
ARC-AGI-1	5.5%	—
EnigmaEval	2.2%	—
LMArena Hard Prompts	1384	—
DTBench	68.3%	—
LMCA	25.6%	—
ForecastBench	61.5	—

Math Mistral Small 3.2 leads

GPT-4.1: 22.3 (#280), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	38.3%	30.3%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	6%	—
Omni-MATH	47.1%	—
LMArena Math	1370	—
MATH Level 5	83%	—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	5.5%	—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)	0%	—

Knowledge GPT-4.1 leads

GPT-4.1: 37.1 (#160), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
GPQA Diamond	66.9%	49.1%
Humanity's Last Exam	5.4%	—
SimpleQA Verified	31.1%	—
MMLU-Pro	81.1%	—
Vectara Hallucination Rate	5.6%	—
GPQA (HELM)	65.9%	—
LMArena Expert	1364	—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 38.2 (#67), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Vision	1211	—
GeoBench	72%	—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 49.4 (#133), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Non-English	1370	—
LMArena Chinese	1382	—
LMArena French	1382	—
LMArena German	1381	—
LMArena Japanese	1319	—
LMArena Korean	1339	—
LMArena Russian	1377	—
LMArena Spanish	1376	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 71.3 (#153), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
IFEval	83.8%	—
LMArena Instruction Following	1367	—

Long Context Not comparable

GPT-4.1: 40.0 (#163), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
Fiction.LiveBench	63.9%	—
LMArena Longer Query	1385	—

Writing & Preference GPT-4.1 leads

GPT-4.1: 57.6 (#125), Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	GPT-4.1	Mistral Small 3.2
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	1420	1255
LMArena Text	1383	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1363	—
WildBench	85.4%	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1398	—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-4.1 better than Mistral Small 3.2?

Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 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; GPT-4.1 lists at $2 and $8.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 does, with 1.05M tokens against 256K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 and Mistral Small 3.2 share?

6 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.2 has 6.