Model comparison

Llama 3.2 3B vs Mistral Small

Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 16 shared benchmarks.

Llama 3.2 3B

Summary

They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.2 3B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small in 7 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Small leads 52.5 to 24.7.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 28.3% for Llama 3.2 3B and 46.6% for Mistral Small.
Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 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

Llama 3.2 3B and Mistral Small specifications
	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
Provider	Meta	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	28.9	33.4
Released	2024-09-24	2024-02-26
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	262K
Max output	118K	256K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.05	$0.15
Output $ / M tokens	$0.33	$0.60
Results tracked	18	39

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
BigCodeBench Instruct	23.4%	36.1%
LMArena Coding	1098	1362
BigCodeBench Complete	28.3%	46.6%
SciCode	—	26.5%
LiveBench Coding	—	36.2%
ALE-Bench	—	497.62

Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	21.9%	37.1%
BALROG	10.1%	—

Reasoning Llama 3.2 3B leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Hard Prompts	1095	1335
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	37.8%
CritPt	—	0%
LiveBench Reasoning	—	44.8%
DTBench	—	70.9%
LiveBench Data Analysis	—	53.7%
LMCA	—	20.6%
LiveBench	—	44%

Math Llama 3.2 3B leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Math	1126	1341
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	5.8%
LiveBench Math	—	39.9%
MATH Level 5	—	46.8%

Knowledge Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Expert	1090	1291
GPQA Diamond	—	47.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	5.1%
MMLU	—	68.7%

Multimodal Not comparable

Llama 3.2 3B: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Vision	—	1142

Multilingual Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Non-English	1019	1315
LMArena Chinese	1017	1340
LMArena German	1056	1340
LMArena Russian	949	1324
LMArena French	—	1337
LMArena Japanese	—	1275
LMArena Korean	—	1259
LMArena Spanish	—	1346

Instruction Following Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following	1089	1310
LiveBench Instruction Following	—	63.7%

Long Context Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Longer Query	1100	1327

Writing & Preference Mistral Small leads

Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Llama 3.2 3B	Mistral Small
LMArena Text	1110	1338
LMArena Creative Writing	1094	1305
LMArena Multi-Turn	1105	1344
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	595	—
LiveBench Language	—	30.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 3.2 3B better than Mistral Small?

Which is cheaper, Llama 3.2 3B or Mistral Small?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.

Is Llama 3.2 3B or Mistral Small better for coding?

Mistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.0 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Small does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

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

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.2 3B has 18 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.