Model comparison
Mistral Small 3.2 vs o3-mini
o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3.2 scores higher in 1 category and o3-mini in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where o3-mini leads 38.3 to 26.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 30.3% for Mistral Small 3.2 and 76.9% for o3-mini.
- Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper at $0.0938 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- Mistral Small 3.2 accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 200K.
- Mistral Small 3.2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 31.2 | 36.7 |
| Released | 2025-06-20 | 2024-12-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 256K | 200K |
| Max output | 16K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.0938 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 6 | 51 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1378 |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |
Reasoning Mistral Small 3.2 leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287), o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | 17% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 131.74 | 140.34 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 40.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1366 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |
Math o3-mini leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260), o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30.3% | 76.9% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1396 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge o3-mini leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256), o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 49.1% | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1364 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1379 |
| LMArena French | — | 1334 |
| LMArena German | — | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1321 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1337 |
Long Context Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1343 |
Writing & Preference o3-mini leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224), o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1286 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1320 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3.2 better than o3-mini?
o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 14× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.2 or o3-mini?
Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.0938 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small 3.2 does, with 256K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.2 and o3-mini share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.2 has 6 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.