Model comparison

Llama 3.2 3B vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 25× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 13 shared benchmarks.

Llama 3.2 3B

Summary

They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.2 3B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 58.5 to 24.7.
Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Llama 3.2 3B and Mistral Medium 3.5 specifications
	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Provider	Meta	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	28.9	40.2
Released	2024-09-24	—
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	262K
Max output	118K	210K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.05	$1.50
Output $ / M tokens	$0.33	$7.50
Results tracked	18	22

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319), Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Coding	1098	1461
LMArena WebDev	—	1264
BigCodeBench Instruct	23.4%	—
BigCodeBench Complete	28.3%	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143), Mistral Medium 3.5: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	21.9%	—
BALROG	10.1%	—

Reasoning Llama 3.2 3B leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228), Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Hard Prompts	1095	1436
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	41.4%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	12.9%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	141.35

Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214), Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Math	1126	1431

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235), Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Expert	1090	1432

Multimodal Not comparable

Llama 3.2 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Vision	—	1223

Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281), Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Non-English	1019	1404
LMArena Chinese	1017	1442
LMArena German	1056	1451
LMArena Russian	949	1395
LMArena French	—	1448
LMArena Korean	—	1385
LMArena Spanish	—	1409

Instruction Following Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275), Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Instruction Following	1089	1415

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261), Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Longer Query	1100	1415

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307), Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Text	1110	1421
LMArena Creative Writing	1094	1374
LMArena Multi-Turn	1105	1423
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	595	—
EQ-Bench 4	—	993

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 3.2 3B better than Mistral Medium 3.5?

Which is cheaper, Llama 3.2 3B or Mistral Medium 3.5?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is Llama 3.2 3B or Mistral Medium 3.5 better for coding?

Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Llama 3.2 3B and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.2 3B has 18 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.