# Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite vs Mistral Small 3

> Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.4 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-2-5-flash-lite-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher in 7 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite leads 57.0 to 32.4.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.40 for Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite.
- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 36.4 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 208 | 268 |
| Context | 1.05M | 33K |
| Input $/M | $0.10 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $0.40 | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 38.0 (#167)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1373 | 1246 |
| WeirdML | 35.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 325.9 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 27.8 (#89)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 36.9% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 21.5 (#196)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1377 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.93 | 127.06 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 40.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | 62.8% | — |
| LMCA | 18.1% | — |

## Math

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 35.5 (#144)
- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1373 | 1240 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 6.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 48% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 32.1 (#206)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1373 | 1202 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.3% |
| MMLU-Pro | 53.7% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 3.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.9% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 28.6 (#109)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1198 | — |
| VPCT | 30% | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 49.5 (#129)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1369 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1404 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1388 | 1202 |
| LMArena German | 1390 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1359 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1358 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1373 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1396 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 70.2 (#163)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1366 | 1214 |
| IFEval | 81% | — |

## Long Context

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 33.3 (#257)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1373 | 1246 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 47.2% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite: 57.0 (#130)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)

| Benchmark | Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1379 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1366 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1367 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| WildBench | 81.8% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite better than Mistral Small 3?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.4 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite 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; Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite lists at $0.10 and $0.40.

### Is Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.0 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite and Mistral Small 3 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 2.5 Flash-Lite has 33 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.