# Claude 2.1 vs Mistral Small 3

> Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 25.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-2-1-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 3

## Summary

- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 2.1 scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small 3 in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Mistral Small 3 leads 36.5 to 26.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 33% for Claude 2.1 and 47.3% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 25.2 | 31.2 |
| Rank | 345 | 278 |
| Context | — | 33K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 2.1: 26.2 (#327)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| WeirdML | 7.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |

## Reasoning

- Claude 2.1: 21.4 (#221)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 119.27 | 127.07 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1233 |
| DTBench | 51% | — |
| ForecastBench | 54.2 | — |

## Math

- Claude 2.1: 10.2 (#315)
- Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 1.9% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1240 |

## Knowledge

- Claude 2.1: 15.4 (#292)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 33% | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1202 |
| MMLU | 73.5% | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 2.1: —
- Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1204 |
| LMArena French | — | 1203 |
| LMArena German | — | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1216 |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 2.1: —
- Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1214 |

## Long Context

- Claude 2.1: —
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 2.1: —
- Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)

| Benchmark | Claude 2.1 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1217 |

## FAQ

### Is Claude 2.1 better than Mistral Small 3?

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 25.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Claude 2.1 or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 26.2 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Claude 2.1 and Mistral Small 3 share?

3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 2.1 has 7 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.