# Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite vs Mistral Small 3

> Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.4 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 9.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-1-flash-lite-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 20

## Summary

- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite leads 61.0 to 32.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 80% for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $1.50 for Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 40.4 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 141 | 268 |
| Context | 1.05M | 33K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 37.5 (#179)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1400 | 1246 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1256 | — |
| SciCode | 41.9% | — |
| WeirdML | 52.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 797.73 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 29.9 (#72)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| DeepResearch Bench | 37.3% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 22.3 (#181)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 25% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1407 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 144.45 | 127.06 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 67.2% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 8.2% | — |
| CritPt | 1.1% | — |
| EnigmaEval | 3% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 63.3% | — |
| DTBench | 76.8% | — |
| LMCA | 35% | — |
| ForecastBench | 54.4 | — |

## Math

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 39.5 (#82)
- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 80% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1427 | 1240 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 27.7% | — |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 41.7 (#95)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 81.8% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1397 | 1202 |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 8.6% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 8.2% | — |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 38.7 (#57)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1240 | — |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 52.5 (#82)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1410 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1461 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1423 | 1202 |
| LMArena German | 1429 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1411 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1393 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1420 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1420 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 72.9 (#126)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1376 | 1214 |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 42.5 (#117)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1394 | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite: 61.0 (#90)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1416 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1401 | 1195 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1417 | 1217 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite better than Mistral Small 3?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.4 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 9.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.1 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 3.1 Flash Lite lists at $0.25 and $1.50.

### Is Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.5 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite and Mistral Small 3 share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.1 Flash Lite has 38 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.