Model comparison
GPT-5.6 Sol vs Mistral Small 3
GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 139× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.6 Sol's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where GPT-5.6 Sol leads 85.6 to 16.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 100% for GPT-5.6 Sol and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $4 / $20 for GPT-5.6 Sol.
- GPT-5.6 Sol accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 65.0 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2026-07-09 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 1.05M | 33K |
| Max output | 128K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $4 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $20 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 65 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 65.1 (#7), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1498 | 1246 |
| DeepSWE | 72.7% | — |
| FrontierCode | 47.5% | — |
| CursorBench | 41.7% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1618 | — |
| FrontierSWE | 32.2% | — |
| SciCode | 57.1% | — |
| GSO | 76.5% | — |
| WeirdML | 89.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| MirrorCode | 20% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 2,177 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
GPT-5.6 Sol: 50.3 (#7), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 51.4% | — |
| OSWorld 2.0 | 27.3% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 46.9% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 36.2% | — |
| BALROG | 60% | — |
| GBAEval | 52.6% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 30.7% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1257 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 9,619 | — |
Reasoning GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 74.8 (#8), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 64% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1484 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 161.66 | 127.07 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 92.5% | — |
| SimpleBench | 71.7% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 67% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 93.8% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 97.5% | — |
| CritPt | 32.3% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 37.1% | — |
| EBR-Bench | 44.8% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 58% | — |
| DTBench | 96% | — |
| LMCA | 59.2% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 93.1% | — |
| Bench to the Future 3 | 0.14 | — |
Math GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 85.6 (#9), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 100% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1474 | 1240 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 89.1% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 82.9% | — |
| ProofBench | 83% | — |
| FrontierMath Erdős | 0% | — |
Knowledge GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 64.3 (#18), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.5% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1516 | 1202 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 69.7% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 12.4% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
GPT-5.6 Sol: 48.6 (#9), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1281 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 33.6% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 56.7% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1483 | — |
Multilingual GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 55.3 (#32), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1452 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1527 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1477 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1476 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1471 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1442 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1468 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1441 | — |
Instruction Following GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 77.7 (#16), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1482 | 1214 |
Long Context GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 45.4 (#42), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1480 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference GPT-5.6 Sol leads
GPT-5.6 Sol: 73.3 (#12), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | GPT-5.6 Sol | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1457 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1448 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1972 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1460 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1250 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is GPT-5.6 Sol better than Mistral Small 3?
GPT-5.6 Sol is the stronger model overall, scoring 65.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 139× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5.6 Sol's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, GPT-5.6 Sol 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-5.6 Sol lists at $4 and $20.
Is GPT-5.6 Sol or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
GPT-5.6 Sol scores higher on coding benchmarks: 65.1 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
GPT-5.6 Sol does, with 1.05M tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do GPT-5.6 Sol and Mistral Small 3 share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5.6 Sol has 65 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.