Model comparison
Ministral 3B vs Mistral Large
Mistral Large is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 26.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Large's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 6 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Large in 1 category; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Large leads 30.1 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 50.3% for Mistral Large.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Mistral Large.
Side by side
| Ministral 3B | Mistral Large | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 26.2 | 31.9 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 131K |
| Max output | 262K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.10 | $2 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.10 | $6 |
| Results tracked | 6 | 51 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Large: 34.3 (#240)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 30% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 47.1% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1277 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 38.3% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 264.7 |
| HumanEval+ | — | 62.2% |
| MBPP+ | — | 59.5% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Large: 28.6 (#89)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 38.4% |
Reasoning Ministral 3B leads
Ministral 3B: 18.4 (#282), Mistral Large: 15.8 (#310)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51.7% | 65.1% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | 16.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.1 | 128.52 |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 43.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1257 |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 50.1% |
| ForecastBench | — | 57.1 |
| LiveBench | — | 48.4% |
Math Ministral 3B leads
Ministral 3B: 26.6 (#258), Mistral Large: 18.2 (#291)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | 50.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 8.5% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 28.1% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 42.5% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1262 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 0.3% |
Knowledge Mistral Large leads
Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#302), Mistral Large: 30.1 (#230)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 51.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | 4.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 59.9% |
| Confabulations | — | 21.4% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 43.5% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1232 |
| MMLU | — | 80% |
Multilingual Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Large: 40.0 (#219)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1237 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1240 |
| LMArena French | — | 1325 |
| LMArena German | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1202 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1268 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Large: 67.9 (#191)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 67.9% |
| IFEval | — | 87.7% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1249 |
Long Context Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Large: 38.3 (#199)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1261 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Large: 40.7 (#242)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Large |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1266 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1243 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 69% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 985 |
| WildBench | — | 80.1% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1260 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 39.4% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 3B better than Mistral Large?
Mistral Large is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.9 to 26.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Large's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Mistral Large?
Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; Mistral Large lists at $2 and $6.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 131K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Mistral Large share?
6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Large has 51.