Model comparison
Mistral Small vs Mistral Small 3
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 7 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Small leads 52.6 to 32.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Instruct: 36.1% for Mistral Small and 45.3% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 33.1 | 30.9 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 256K | 33K |
| Max output | 256K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.60 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3 leads
Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242), Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | 45.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | 50.4% |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |
Reasoning Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238), Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1336 | 1233 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| DTBench | 70.9% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| LMCA | 20.6% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.06 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |
Math Too close to call
Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287), Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1240 |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
Knowledge Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214), Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1293 | 1202 |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164), Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1342 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1202 |
| LMArena German | 1341 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1260 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | — |
Instruction Following Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204), Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1214 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
Long Context Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165), Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1304 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small better than Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.
Is Mistral Small or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small does, with 256K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Mistral Small 3 share?
20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.