# DeepSeek-R1 vs Mistral Small 3.1

> DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 2.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-R1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/deepseek-r1-vs-mistral-small-3-1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 26

## Summary

- They share 26 benchmarks with published results for both. DeepSeek-R1 scores higher in 7 categories and Mistral Small 3.1 in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where DeepSeek-R1 leads 42.0 to 13.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 66.4% for DeepSeek-R1 and 3.9% for Mistral Small 3.1.
- Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper at $0.35 / $0.56 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2.15 for DeepSeek-R1.
- DeepSeek-R1 accepts more context: 164K tokens versus 128K.
- Mistral Small 3.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | DeepSeek | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 42.0 | 31.4 |
| Rank | 110 | 263 |
| Context | 164K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $0.35 |
| Output $/M | $2.15 | $0.56 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- DeepSeek-R1: 45.9 (#63)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.7 (#175)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1427 | 1309 |
| Aider Polyglot | 71.4% | — |
| SciCode | 35.7% | — |
| WeirdML | 41.6% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 66.7% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 804.12 | — |
| AlgoTune | 1.7 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- DeepSeek-R1: 30.4 (#68)
- Mistral Small 3.1: —

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 35.1% | — |
| BALROG | 34.9% | — |
| METR Time Horizons | 53.8% | — |

## Reasoning

- DeepSeek-R1: 18.7 (#253)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 18.9 (#249)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1415 | 1278 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.3 | 127.48 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 1.3% | — |
| SimpleBench | 40.8% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 69.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 21.2% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 1% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 83.2% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 69.8% | — |
| ForecastBench | 60 | — |
| LiveBench | 71.6% | — |

## Math

- DeepSeek-R1: 42.0 (#70)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 13.7 (#295)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 66.4% | 3.9% |
| Omni-MATH | 42.4% | 24.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1401 | 1261 |
| LiveBench Math | 80.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 96.6% | — |

## Knowledge

- DeepSeek-R1: 44.3 (#81)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#266)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 76.3% | 41.9% |
| MMLU-Pro | 79.3% | 61% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 66.6% | 39.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1394 | 1258 |
| Confabulations | 12.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 11.3% | — |

## Multimodal

- DeepSeek-R1: —
- Mistral Small 3.1: 32.6 (#93)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1136 |

## Multilingual

- DeepSeek-R1: 52.6 (#80)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.4 (#204)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1412 | 1255 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1443 | 1254 |
| LMArena French | 1415 | 1270 |
| LMArena German | 1405 | 1266 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1394 | 1210 |
| LMArena Korean | 1359 | 1206 |
| LMArena Russian | 1423 | 1263 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1410 | 1283 |

## Instruction Following

- DeepSeek-R1: 72.2 (#138)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 63.8 (#225)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 78.4% | 75% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1382 | 1264 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 80.5% | — |

## Long Context

- DeepSeek-R1: 45.4 (#36)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#172)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1391 | 1300 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 75% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- DeepSeek-R1: 61.5 (#84)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.2 (#254)

| Benchmark | DeepSeek-R1 | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1428 | 1278 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1406 | 1253 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1500 | 761 |
| WildBench | 82.8% | 78.8% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1404 | 1270 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 83% | — |
| LiveBench Language | 48.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is DeepSeek-R1 better than Mistral Small 3.1?

DeepSeek-R1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 2.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when DeepSeek-R1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, DeepSeek-R1 or Mistral Small 3.1?

Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.35 per million input tokens and $0.56 per million output tokens; DeepSeek-R1 lists at $0.50 and $2.15.

### Is DeepSeek-R1 or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?

DeepSeek-R1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 45.9 versus 37.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

DeepSeek-R1 does, with 164K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do DeepSeek-R1 and Mistral Small 3.1 share?

26 benchmarks have published results for both models. DeepSeek-R1 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.