# Codestral vs Step 3.5 Flash

> Step 3.5 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-step-3-5-flash
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where Step 3.5 Flash leads 42.4 to 27.3.
- Step 3.5 Flash is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.30 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $0.90 for Codestral.
- Step 3.5 Flash has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 42.3 |
| Rank | 290 | 116 |
| Context | 256K | 256K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $0.30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- Step 3.5 Flash: 42.4 (#105)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1436 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- Step 3.5 Flash: 22.2 (#202)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 28.4% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1411 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Step 3.5 Flash: 42.6 (#84)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 66.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1408 |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Step 3.5 Flash: 39.6 (#132)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1421 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Step 3.5 Flash: 50.5 (#119)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1385 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1447 |
| LMArena French | — | 1421 |
| LMArena German | — | 1405 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1354 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1352 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1385 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1419 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Step 3.5 Flash: 73.1 (#124)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1385 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Step 3.5 Flash: 42.8 (#117)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1402 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Step 3.5 Flash: 58.8 (#113)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Step 3.5 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1403 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1357 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1405 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Step 3.5 Flash?

Step 3.5 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Step 3.5 Flash?

Step 3.5 Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.30 per million output tokens; Codestral lists at $0.30 and $0.90.

### Is Codestral or Step 3.5 Flash better for coding?

Step 3.5 Flash scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 256K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Step 3.5 Flash share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Step 3.5 Flash has 19.