Model comparison

Llama 3-8B vs Mistral Small 3.1

Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.7 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.

Llama 3-8B Meta

25.5

Rank #344 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.1 Mistral AI

31.7

Rank #269 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3-8B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small 3.1 in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small 3.1 leads 22.6 to 7.8.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 26.1% for Llama 3-8B and 41.9% for Mistral Small 3.1.

Side by side

Llama 3-8B and Mistral Small 3.1 specifications
Llama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
ProviderMetaMistral AI
Noometry Index25.531.7
Released2024-04-182025-03-17
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window—128K
Max output—102K
Input $ / M tokens—$0.35
Output $ / M tokens—$0.56
Results tracked3428

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 31.0 (#289), Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Coding11521309
BigCodeBench Instruct31.9%—
BigCodeBench Complete36.9%—
HumanEval+56.7%—
MBPP+54.8%—

Reasoning Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 14.3 (#326), Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
Chess Puzzles0%1%
LMArena Hard Prompts11331278
Epoch Capabilities Index116.45127.48
DTBench43.9%—
Adversarial NLI57.3%—
ForecastBench58.6—
WinoGrande75.7%—

Math Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 8.8 (#323), Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20251.9%3.9%
LMArena Math11511262
Omni-MATH—24.8%
MATH Level 56.1%—

Knowledge Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 7.8 (#308), Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
GPQA Diamond26.1%41.9%
LMArena Expert11131257
MMLU-Pro—61%
GPQA (HELM)—39.2%
ARC (AI2) Challenge82.8%—
MMLU68.8%—
OpenBookQA82.6%—
TriviaQA67.7%—

Multimodal Not comparable

Llama 3-8B: —, Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)

Multimodal benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Vision—1136

Multilingual Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 30.8 (#261), Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Non-English10981255
LMArena Chinese10761253
LMArena French11591273
LMArena German11041266
LMArena Japanese9671208
LMArena Korean10041206
LMArena Russian11091263
LMArena Spanish11731283

Instruction Following Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 58.4 (#260), Mistral Small 3.1: 63.6 (#230)

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Instruction Following11271264
IFEval—75%

Long Context Mistral Small 3.1 leads

Llama 3-8B: 34.2 (#251), Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Longer Query11281299

Writing & Preference Too close to call

Llama 3-8B: 37.5 (#256), Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkLlama 3-8BMistral Small 3.1
LMArena Text11661277
LMArena Creative Writing11501253
LMArena Multi-Turn11521270
EQ-Bench Creative Writing—761
WildBench—78.8%

Frequently asked questions

Is Llama 3-8B better than Mistral Small 3.1?

Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.7 to 25.5 on the Noometry Index.

Is Llama 3-8B or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.3 versus 31.0 in the Noometry coding category.

How many benchmarks do Llama 3-8B and Mistral Small 3.1 share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3-8B has 34 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.

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