Model comparison

GPT-5 vs Magistral Small

GPT-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.9 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 10 shared benchmarks.

GPT-5 OpenAI

50.9

Rank #45 Confirmed

Magistral Small Mistral AI

30.2

Rank #296 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 10 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-5 scores higher in 4 categories and Magistral Small in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in reasoning, where GPT-5 leads 38.3 to 6.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 72.7% for GPT-5 and 6.3% for Magistral Small.
  • Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.25 / $10 for GPT-5.
  • GPT-5 accepts more context: 400K tokens versus 128K.
  • Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

GPT-5 and Magistral Small specifications
GPT-5Magistral Small
ProviderOpenAIMistral AI
Noometry Index50.930.2
Released2025-08-072025-06-10
WeightsProprietaryOpen
Context window400K128K
Max output128K40K
Input $ / M tokens$1.25$0.50
Output $ / M tokens$10$1.50
Results tracked6910

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Category by category

Coding GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 50.3 (#47), Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
SciCode42.9%35.2%
SWE-bench Verified73.6%—
SWE-bench Verified (bash only)65%—
Aider Polyglot88%—
LMArena WebDev1418—
GSO6.9%—
WeirdML60.7%—
LMArena Coding1436—
ALE-Bench1,162—
AlgoTune1.67—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

GPT-5: 33.1 (#56), Magistral Small: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
Terminal-Bench49.6%—
GDPval34.8%—
Remote Labor Index1.7%—
DeepResearch Bench49.6%—
BALROG32.8%—
LMArena Search1133—
METR Time Horizons69.6%—

Reasoning GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 38.3 (#64), Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
ARC-AGI-29.9%0%
Kagi LLM Benchmark72.7%6.3%
ARC-AGI-165.7%5%
CritPt12.6%0.3%
Chess Puzzles37%3%
DTBench90.7%61.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index150133.19
SimpleBench56.7%—
EnigmaEval10.5%—
EBR-Bench12.7%—
LMArena Hard Prompts1416—
Mystery Game Puzzles23%—
LMCA40%—
ForecastBench61.4—

Math GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 55.0 (#44), Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-202591.4%30%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)55.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 422%—
ProofBench18%—
Omni-MATH64.7%—
LMArena Math1407—
MATH Level 598.1%—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)32.4%—
FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1)12.5%—

Knowledge GPT-5 leads

GPT-5: 56.6 (#43), Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
GPQA Diamond86.2%56.1%
Humanity's Last Exam25.3%—
SimpleQA Verified50.1%—
MMLU-Pro86.3%—
Confabulations10.3%—
Vectara Hallucination Rate14.7%—
GPQA (HELM)79.2%—
LMArena Expert1419—

Multimodal Not comparable

GPT-5: 46.8 (#13), Magistral Small: —

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
LMArena Vision1232—
GeoBench81%—
VPCT66%—

Multilingual Not comparable

GPT-5: 51.4 (#110), Magistral Small: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
LMArena Non-English1397—
LMArena Chinese1422—
LMArena French1410—
LMArena German1416—
LMArena Japanese1409—
LMArena Korean1360—
LMArena Russian1406—
LMArena Spanish1399—

Instruction Following Not comparable

GPT-5: 73.8 (#113), Magistral Small: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
IFEval87.5%—
LMArena Instruction Following1388—

Long Context Not comparable

GPT-5: 69.5 (#2), Magistral Small: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
Fiction.LiveBench97.2%—
LMArena Longer Query1399—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

GPT-5: 63.4 (#65), Magistral Small: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGPT-5Magistral Small
LMArena Text1406—
LMArena Creative Writing1365—
Short-Story Creative Writing86%—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing1627—
WildBench85.7%—
LMArena Multi-Turn1426—

Frequently asked questions

Is GPT-5 better than Magistral Small?

GPT-5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 50.9 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, GPT-5 or Magistral Small?

Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; GPT-5 lists at $1.25 and $10.

Is GPT-5 or Magistral Small better for coding?

GPT-5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 50.3 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-5 does, with 400K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do GPT-5 and Magistral Small share?

10 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-5 has 69 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Small has 10.

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