Model comparison

Granite 4.0 Micro vs Mistral Small 3

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.

Granite 4.0 Micro IBM

29.0

Rank #318 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3 Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #278 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 2 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small 3 leads 25.1 to 9.9.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 28.3% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 47.3% for Mistral Small 3.
  • Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.05 / $0.08 for Mistral Small 3.
  • Granite 4.0 Micro accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.

Side by side

Granite 4.0 Micro and Mistral Small 3 specifications
Granite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
ProviderIBMMistral AI
Noometry Index29.031.2
Released2025-10-022025-01-30
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window131K33K
Max output118K16K
Input $ / M tokens$0.017$0.05
Output $ / M tokens$0.11$0.08
Results tracked824

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
BigCodeBench Instruct—45.3%
LMArena Coding—1246
BigCodeBench Complete—50.4%

Reasoning Too close to call

Granite 4.0 Micro: 19.2 (#265), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
Chess Puzzles0%0%
LMArena Hard Prompts—1233
Epoch Capabilities Index—127.07

Math Mistral Small 3 leads

Granite 4.0 Micro: 12.0 (#307), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20252.8%6.7%
Omni-MATH20.9%—
LMArena Math—1240

Knowledge Mistral Small 3 leads

Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#304), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
GPQA Diamond28.3%47.3%
MMLU-Pro39.5%—
Confabulations—25.2%
GPQA (HELM)30.7%—
LMArena Expert—1202

Multilingual Not comparable

Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
LMArena Non-English—1198
LMArena Chinese—1204
LMArena French—1203
LMArena German—1211
LMArena Japanese—1111
LMArena Korean—1188
LMArena Russian—1216

Instruction Following Granite 4.0 Micro leads

Granite 4.0 Micro: 69.9 (#169), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
IFEval84.9%—
LMArena Instruction Following—1214

Long Context Not comparable

Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
LMArena Longer Query—1246

Writing & Preference Granite 4.0 Micro leads

Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#216), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkGranite 4.0 MicroMistral Small 3
LMArena Text—1234
LMArena Creative Writing—1195
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—707
WildBench67%—
LMArena Multi-Turn—1217

Frequently asked questions

Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Mistral Small 3?

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Mistral Small 3?

Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3 lists at $0.05 and $0.08.

Which has the bigger context window?

Granite 4.0 Micro does, with 131K tokens against 33K.

How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Mistral Small 3 share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.

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