Model comparison
Ministral 8B vs Mistral Small
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small leads 31.0 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.9% for Ministral 8B and 46.8% for Mistral Small.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
Side by side
| Ministral 8B | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 33.4 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1362 |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |
Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | 37.1% |
Reasoning Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 45.7% | 70.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| LMCA | — | 20.6% |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1341 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | 46.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
Knowledge Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1291 |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Ministral 8B: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |
Multilingual Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1340 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1324 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena German | — | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1259 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |
Instruction Following Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
Long Context Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Small leads
Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 8B better than Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Mistral Small?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.
Is Ministral 8B or Mistral Small better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (35.0 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Mistral Small share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.