Model comparison
Mistral Small 3 vs StarCoder 2 3B
Mistral Small 3 has enough public results to be ranked (#268); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
NVIDIASummary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 1 category and StarCoder 2 3B in 0 categories; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Mistral Small 3 leads 36.0 to 32.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 50.4% for Mistral Small 3 and 21.4% for StarCoder 2 3B.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 35.8 |
| Released | 2025-01-30 | 2024-02-22 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 33K | — |
| Max output | 16K | — |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | — |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.08 | — |
| Results tracked | 24 | 7 |
Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry
Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3 leads
Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203), StarCoder 2 3B: 32.9
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | 21.4% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 27.4% |
Reasoning Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.06 | 88.01 |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |
Math Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 21.6% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 34.2% |
| MMLU | — | 36.6% |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | — |
| LMArena French | 1202 | — |
| LMArena German | 1211 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275), StarCoder 2 3B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3 better than StarCoder 2 3B?
Mistral Small 3 has enough public results to be ranked (#268); StarCoder 2 3B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.
Is Mistral Small 3 or StarCoder 2 3B better for coding?
Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and StarCoder 2 3B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 3B has 7.