Model comparison
Granite 4.0 Micro vs Mistral Small
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 6.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small leads 31.0 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 28.3% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 47.5% for Mistral Small.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 29.0 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2025-10-02 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Max output | 118K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.017 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.11 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 8 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1362 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |
Reasoning Too close to call
Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1335 |
| DTBench | — | 70.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| LMCA | — | 20.6% |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Mistral Small leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | 5.8% |
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1341 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |
Knowledge Mistral Small leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | 47.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1291 |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1340 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena German | — | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |
Instruction Following Granite 4.0 Micro leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
| IFEval | 84.9% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1310 |
Long Context Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Small leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1305 |
| WildBench | 67% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index. Granite 4.0 Micro costs 6.4× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Mistral Small?
Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Mistral Small share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.