Model comparison
Mistral Large vs Mistral Small 3
Mistral Large and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 31.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 23 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Large scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Large leads 40.7 to 32.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Instruct: 30% for Mistral Large and 45.3% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Mistral Large.
- Mistral Large accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 33K |
| Max output | 16K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $6 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 51 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3 leads
Mistral Large: 34.3 (#240), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 30% | 45.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1277 | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 38.3% | 50.4% |
| SciCode | 36.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 47.1% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 264.7 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 62.2% | — |
| MBPP+ | 59.5% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Large: 28.6 (#89), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 38.4% | — |
Reasoning Mistral Small 3 leads
Mistral Large: 15.8 (#310), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1257 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 128.52 | 127.07 |
| SimpleBench | 22.5% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 43.5% | — |
| DTBench | 65.1% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 50.1% | — |
| LMCA | 16.7% | — |
| ForecastBench | 57.1 | — |
| LiveBench | 48.4% | — |
Math Mistral Large leads
Mistral Large: 18.2 (#291), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 8.5% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1262 | 1240 |
| Omni-MATH | 28.1% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 42.5% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 50.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 0.3% | — |
Knowledge Mistral Large leads
Mistral Large: 30.1 (#230), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 51.3% | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | 21.4% | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1232 | 1202 |
| MMLU-Pro | 59.9% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 4.5% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 43.5% | — |
| MMLU | 80% | — |
Multilingual Mistral Large leads
Mistral Large: 40.0 (#219), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1237 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1240 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1325 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1254 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1188 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1202 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1257 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1268 | — |
Instruction Following Mistral Large leads
Mistral Large: 67.9 (#191), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1249 | 1214 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 67.9% | — |
| IFEval | 87.7% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
Mistral Large: 38.3 (#199), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1261 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Large leads
Mistral Large: 40.7 (#242), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | Mistral Large | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1266 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1243 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 985 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1260 | 1217 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 69% | — |
| WildBench | 80.1% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 39.4% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Large better than Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Large and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 31.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Large or Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Mistral Large lists at $2 and $6.
Is Mistral Large or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 34.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Large does, with 131K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Large and Mistral Small 3 share?
23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Large has 51 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.