# Codestral vs Llama 3.2 3B

> Codestral is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.6 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Codestral's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-llama-3-2-3b
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Llama 3.2 3B in 2 categories; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 52.5% for Codestral and 28.3% for Llama 3.2 3B.
- Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $0.90 for Codestral.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 131K.
- Llama 3.2 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Meta |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 28.9 |
| Rank | 290 | 321 |
| Context | 256K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $0.33 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | 23.4% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | 28.3% |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1098 |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 21.9% |
| BALROG | — | 10.1% |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1095 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1126 |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1090 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1019 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1017 |
| LMArena German | — | 1056 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 949 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1089 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1100 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Llama 3.2 3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1110 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1094 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 595 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1105 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Llama 3.2 3B?

Codestral is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.6 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Codestral's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Llama 3.2 3B?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Codestral lists at $0.30 and $0.90.

### Is Codestral or Llama 3.2 3B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (27.3 vs 27.6); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Llama 3.2 3B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Llama 3.2 3B has 18.