Noometry

Model comparison

Mistral Small 3 vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index.

Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.

Mistral Small 3 Mistral AI

30.9

Rank #268 Confirmed

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning NVIDIA

39.3

Rank #156 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 0 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 34.7 to 15.3.
  • Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.16 for Nemotron 3.5 Lightning.
  • Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 33K.

Side by side

Mistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
ProviderMistral AINVIDIA
Noometry Index30.939.3
Released2025-01-302026-08-11
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window33K262K
Max output16K262K
Input $ / M tokens$0.05$0.06
Output $ / M tokens$0.08$0.16
Results tracked2418

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Category by category

Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Coding12461370
BigCodeBench Instruct45.3%—
BigCodeBench Complete50.4%—

Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Hard Prompts12331335
Chess Puzzles0%—
Epoch Capabilities Index127.06—

Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Math12401355
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-20256.7%—

Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Expert12021354
GPQA Diamond47.3%—
Confabulations25.2%—

Multilingual Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Non-English11981292
LMArena Chinese12041356
LMArena French12021369
LMArena German12111280
LMArena Japanese11111213
LMArena Korean11881233
LMArena Russian12161257
LMArena Spanish—1321

Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Instruction Following12141317

Long Context Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Longer Query12461312

Writing & Preference Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads

Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)

BenchmarkMistral Small 3Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
LMArena Text12341324
LMArena Creative Writing11951254
EQ-Bench Creative Writing7071280
LMArena Multi-Turn12171327

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Small 3 better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Nemotron 3.5 Lightning lists at $0.06 and $0.16.

Is Mistral Small 3 or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 33K.

How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.

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