Model comparison

Mistral Medium vs Mistral Small 3.2

Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 23× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 3 shared benchmarks.

Mistral Medium

Mistral AI

36.3

Rank #218 Confirmed

Mistral Small 3.2

Mistral AI

31.2

Rank #280 Confirmed

Summary

They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Small 3.2 in 1 category; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium leads 60.0 to 45.0.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 59.5% for Mistral Medium and 49.1% for Mistral Small 3.2.
Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper at $0.0938 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium.
Mistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.

Side by side

Mistral Medium and Mistral Small 3.2 specifications
	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
Provider	Mistral AI	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	36.3	31.2
Released	2023-12-11	2025-06-20
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	262K	256K
Max output	262K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$1.50	$0.0938
Output $ / M tokens	$7.50	$0.25
Results tracked	36	6

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Mistral Medium: 34.2 (#243), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
FrontierCode	8%	—
SciCode	40.2%	—
WeirdML	43.7%	—
LMArena Coding	1434	—
ALE-Bench	763.98	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mistral Medium: 28.3 (#90), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	37.7%	—

Reasoning Mistral Medium leads

Mistral Medium: 24.0 (#167), Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
Kagi LLM Benchmark	50%	40.4%
CritPt	0%	—
Chess Puzzles	—	1%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1426	—
DTBench	75.5%	—
LMCA	26.1%	—
Surface Evolver Bench	26.9%	—
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	131.74

Math Mistral Medium leads

Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#245), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	32.2%	30.3%
ProofBench	9%	—
LMArena Math	1408	—
MATH Level 5	81.6%	—
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)	0.3%	—

Knowledge Mistral Small 3.2 leads

Mistral Medium: 25.0 (#265), Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
GPQA Diamond	59.5%	49.1%
Humanity's Last Exam	4.5%	—
Vectara Hallucination Rate	22.7%	—
LMArena Expert	1408	—

Multimodal Not comparable

Mistral Medium: 35.3 (#88), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Vision	1172	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Mistral Medium: 52.1 (#91), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Non-English	1408	—
LMArena Chinese	1447	—
LMArena French	1459	—
LMArena German	1432	—
LMArena Japanese	1378	—
LMArena Korean	1380	—
LMArena Russian	1411	—
LMArena Spanish	1433	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Mistral Medium: 73.7 (#116), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Instruction Following	1398	—

Long Context Not comparable

Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#114), Mistral Small 3.2: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Longer Query	1406	—

Writing & Preference Mistral Medium leads

Mistral Medium: 60.0 (#103), Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium	Mistral Small 3.2
LMArena Text	1424	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1391	—
Short-Story Creative Writing	77.3%	—
EQ-Bench Creative Writing	—	1255
LMArena Multi-Turn	1418	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Medium better than Mistral Small 3.2?

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium or Mistral Small 3.2?

Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.0938 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 256K.

How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium and Mistral Small 3.2 share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium has 36 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.2 has 6.