# Codestral vs Mistral Small 3

> Codestral and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.1 vs 30.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

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

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Mistral Small 3 leads 36.0 to 26.9.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $0.90 for Codestral.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 33K.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 287 | 268 |
| Context | 256K | 33K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $0.08 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 26.9 (#316)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | 50.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1246 |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.1 (#244)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.06 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)

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

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1202 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1204 |
| LMArena French | — | 1202 |
| LMArena German | — | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1216 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1214 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)

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

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Mistral Small 3?

Codestral and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.1 vs 30.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral 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; Codestral lists at $0.30 and $0.90.

### Is Codestral or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 26.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Mistral Small 3 share?

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