# Claude 3 Opus vs Mistral Small 3

> Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 29.5 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-opus-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 23

## Summary

- They share 23 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Opus scores higher in 4 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 4 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude 3 Opus leads 47.2 to 32.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 57.4% for Claude 3 Opus and 50.4% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 29.5 | 31.2 |
| Rank | 310 | 278 |
| Context | — | 33K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Opus: 32.9 (#267)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.5% | 45.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1264 | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 57.4% | 50.4% |
| WeirdML | 19.2% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 38.6% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 77.4% | — |
| MBPP+ | 73.3% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Claude 3 Opus: 24.6 (#116)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | 10% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 29.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Opus: 14.6 (#324)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 5% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1245 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 126.91 | 127.07 |
| SimpleBench | 23.5% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 0.8% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 40.6% | — |
| DTBench | 61.6% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 57.9% | — |
| LMCA | 17% | — |
| ForecastBench | 58.4 | — |
| LiveBench | 49.2% | — |
| WinoGrande | 88.5% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3 Opus: 14.8 (#299)
- Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 4.7% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1273 | 1240 |
| LiveBench Math | 43.6% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 37.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Opus: 24.5 (#267)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.2% | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | 22.7% | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | 1202 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.6% | — |
| MMLU | 84.6% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Opus: 27.1 (#116)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1023 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Opus: 41.4 (#207)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1258 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1248 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1275 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1258 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1204 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1187 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1280 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1246 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Opus: 64.1 (#228)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1248 | 1214 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.9% | — |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Opus: 38.2 (#202)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1259 | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Opus: 47.2 (#213)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Opus | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1262 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1235 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| LiveBench Language | 50.4% | — |

## FAQ

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

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.2 to 29.5 on the Noometry Index.

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

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.

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

23 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Opus has 46 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.