# Claude 3 Sonnet vs Mistral Small 3

> Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/claude-3-sonnet-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Claude 3 Sonnet scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 5 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Claude 3 Sonnet leads 42.3 to 32.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 40.6% for Claude 3 Sonnet and 47.3% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Anthropic | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 28.8 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 311 | 268 |
| Context | — | 33K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 29.2 (#296)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 42.7% | 45.3% |
| LMArena Coding | 1223 | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 53.8% | 50.4% |
| WeirdML | 10.2% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 64% | — |
| MBPP+ | 69.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 19.7 (#232)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1197 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 120.69 | 127.06 |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | 53.6% | — |
| WinoGrande | 75.1% | — |

## Math

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 10.0 (#305)
- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.5% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1213 | 1240 |
| MATH Level 5 | 18.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 21.1 (#271)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 40.6% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1173 | 1202 |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| MMLU | 75.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 24.7 (#120)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 984 | — |

## Multilingual

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 38.0 (#229)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1205 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1188 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1228 | 1202 |
| LMArena German | 1204 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1131 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1128 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1227 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1204 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 63.1 (#230)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1200 | 1214 |

## Long Context

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 36.7 (#223)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1211 | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Claude 3 Sonnet: 42.3 (#233)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)

| Benchmark | Claude 3 Sonnet | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1218 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1186 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1227 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |

## FAQ

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

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.

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

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 29.2 in the Noometry coding category.

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

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Claude 3 Sonnet has 30 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.