# Codestral vs o3-mini

> o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-o3-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 1

## Summary

- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 1 category and o3-mini in 1 category; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where o3-mini leads 40.8 to 27.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Aider Polyglot: 11.1% for Codestral and 60.4% for o3-mini.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $1.10 / $4.40 for o3-mini.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 200K.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 290 | 212 |
| Context | 256K | 200K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $1.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $4.40 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- o3-mini: 40.8 (#132)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | 60.4% |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1378 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 29.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- o3-mini: 16.3 (#305)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1366 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 140.34 |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 28.1 (#244)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1396 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 38.3 (#146)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1364 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1379 |
| LMArena French | — | 1334 |
| LMArena German | — | 1303 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1286 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 75.1 (#72)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1337 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 33.8 (#256)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1343 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- o3-mini: 50.3 (#182)

| Benchmark | Codestral | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1286 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1320 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than o3-mini?

o3-mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when o3-mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or o3-mini?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; o3-mini lists at $1.10 and $4.40.

### Is Codestral or o3-mini better for coding?

o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 200K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and o3-mini share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.