# Amazon Nova Lite vs Mistral Small 3

> Amazon Nova Lite and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 31.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/amazon-nova-lite-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 16

## Summary

- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Amazon Nova Lite scores higher in 5 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Amazon Nova Lite leads 27.8 to 16.3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.06 / $0.24 for Amazon Nova Lite.
- Amazon Nova Lite accepts more context: 300K tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Amazon | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 31.9 | 31.2 |
| Rank | 265 | 278 |
| Context | 300K | 33K |
| Input $/M | $0.06 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.24 | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Amazon Nova Lite: 32.5 (#270)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1239 | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| LiveBench Coding | 27.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 236.25 | — |

## Reasoning

- Amazon Nova Lite: 19.3 (#260)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1220 | 1233 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 36.7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 37.2% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.07 |
| LiveBench | 36.4% | — |

## Math

- Amazon Nova Lite: 27.8 (#247)
- Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1227 | 1240 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 6.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 23.3% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 36.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Amazon Nova Lite: 26.3 (#259)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1201 | 1202 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.3% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 3.6% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 60% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 6.1% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.7% | — |
| MMLU | 77% | — |

## Multimodal

- Amazon Nova Lite: 25.5 (#123)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 990 | — |

## Multilingual

- Amazon Nova Lite: 38.0 (#232)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1208 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1237 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1229 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1153 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1153 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1226 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Amazon Nova Lite: 59.3 (#255)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1205 | 1214 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 54.1% | — |
| IFEval | 77.6% | — |

## Long Context

- Amazon Nova Lite: 37.4 (#217)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1234 | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Amazon Nova Lite: 42.1 (#237)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)

| Benchmark | Amazon Nova Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1229 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1197 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1199 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| WildBench | 75% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 25.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Amazon Nova Lite better than Mistral Small 3?

Amazon Nova Lite and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (31.9 vs 31.2), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Amazon Nova Lite 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; Amazon Nova Lite lists at $0.06 and $0.24.

### Is Amazon Nova Lite or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 32.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Amazon Nova Lite does, with 300K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Amazon Nova Lite and Mistral Small 3 share?

16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Amazon Nova Lite has 34 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.