Model comparison

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Mistral Small

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 18 shared benchmarks.

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral AI

40.2

Rank #152 Confirmed

Mistral Small

Mistral AI

33.4

Rank #243 Confirmed

Summary

They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small in 1 category; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in math, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 39.1 to 16.4.
Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.

Side by side

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Mistral Small specifications
	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
Provider	Mistral AI	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	40.2	33.4
Released	—	2024-02-26
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	262K	262K
Max output	210K	256K
Input $ / M tokens	$1.50	$0.15
Output $ / M tokens	$7.50	$0.60
Results tracked	22	39

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Category by category

Coding Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213), Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Coding	1461	1362
LMArena WebDev	1264	—
SciCode	—	26.5%
BigCodeBench Instruct	—	36.1%
LiveBench Coding	—	36.2%
BigCodeBench Complete	—	46.6%
ALE-Bench	—	497.62

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: —, Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	37.1%

Reasoning Mistral Small leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295), Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
Kagi LLM Benchmark	41.4%	37.8%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1436	1335
NYT Connections (extended)	12.9%	—
CritPt	—	0%
LiveBench Reasoning	—	44.8%
DTBench	—	70.9%
LiveBench Data Analysis	—	53.7%
LMCA	—	20.6%
Epoch Capabilities Index	141.35	—
LiveBench	—	44%

Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113), Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Math	1431	1341
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	5.8%
LiveBench Math	—	39.9%
MATH Level 5	—	46.8%

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126), Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Expert	1432	1291
GPQA Diamond	—	47.5%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	5.1%
MMLU	—	68.7%

Multimodal Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65), Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Vision	1223	1142

Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100), Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Non-English	1404	1315
LMArena Chinese	1442	1340
LMArena French	1448	1337
LMArena German	1451	1340
LMArena Korean	1385	1259
LMArena Russian	1395	1324
LMArena Spanish	1409	1346
LMArena Japanese	—	1275

Instruction Following Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90), Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following	1415	1310
LiveBench Instruction Following	—	63.7%

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103), Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Longer Query	1415	1327

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117), Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Mistral Small
LMArena Text	1421	1338
LMArena Creative Writing	1374	1305
LMArena Multi-Turn	1423	1344
EQ-Bench 4	993	—
LiveBench Language	—	30.5%

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Mistral Small?

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Mistral Small better for coding?

Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Mistral Small share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.