Model comparison
Ministral 8B vs Mistral Small 3.1
Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small 3.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 13 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small 3.1 in 6 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small 3.1 leads 22.6 to 12.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 27.1% for Ministral 8B and 41.9% for Mistral Small 3.1.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $0.35 / $0.56 for Mistral Small 3.1.
Side by side
| Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 27.8 | 31.4 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2025-03-17 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 128K |
| Max output | 128K | 102K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.10 | $0.35 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.10 | $0.56 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Ministral 8B: 34.4 (#226), Mistral Small 3.1: 37.7 (#175)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1309 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 16.2 (#140), Mistral Small 3.1: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |
Reasoning Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Ministral 8B: 17.7 (#279), Mistral Small 3.1: 18.9 (#249)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1278 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 1% |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.48 |
Math Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 23.7 (#262), Mistral Small 3.1: 13.7 (#295)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1261 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 3.9% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 24.8% |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |
Knowledge Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Ministral 8B: 12.5 (#292), Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#266)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | 41.9% |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1258 |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 61% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 39.2% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Ministral 8B: —, Mistral Small 3.1: 32.6 (#93)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1136 |
Multilingual Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Ministral 8B: 35.3 (#242), Mistral Small 3.1: 41.4 (#204)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1255 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1254 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1263 |
| LMArena French | — | 1270 |
| LMArena German | — | 1266 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1210 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1206 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1283 |
Instruction Following Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Ministral 8B: 60.7 (#245), Mistral Small 3.1: 63.8 (#225)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1264 |
| IFEval | — | 75% |
Long Context Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#222), Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#172)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1300 |
Writing & Preference Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 39.8 (#241), Mistral Small 3.1: 37.2 (#254)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1278 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1253 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1270 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 761 |
| WildBench | — | 78.8% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 8B better than Mistral Small 3.1?
Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small 3.1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Mistral Small 3.1?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3.1 lists at $0.35 and $0.56.
Is Ministral 8B or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?
Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 34.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 128K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Mistral Small 3.1 share?
13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.