# Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite vs Mistral Small

> Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gemini-3-5-flash-lite-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 25

## Summary

- They share 25 benchmarks with published results for both. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher in 9 categories and Mistral Small in 1 category; 10 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite leads 50.1 to 31.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 71.1% for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and 5.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $2.50 for Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite.
- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Google | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 41.5 | 33.4 |
| Rank | 133 | 243 |
| Context | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $2.50 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 42.4 (#104)
- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 41.3% | 26.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1453 | 1362 |
| ALE-Bench | 765.27 | 497.62 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1440 | — |
| WeirdML | 39% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.7 (#107)
- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 29.3% | — |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |
| GDP.pdf | 10% | — |

## Reasoning

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 27.8 (#114)
- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1441 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 83.5% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 37.6% | 20.6% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 10.3% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 60.4% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 53.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 22% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 19% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 145.13 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |

## Math

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 25.9 (#264)
- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 71.1% | 5.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1433 | 1341 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 26% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 0% | — |
| ProofBench | 13% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |

## Knowledge

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 50.1 (#72)
- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 83.3% | 47.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1435 | 1291 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 41.1 (#40)
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1268 | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 53.5 (#63)
- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1427 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1469 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1451 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1454 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1427 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1407 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1443 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1442 | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 74.8 (#85)
- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1420 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |

## Long Context

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 43.9 (#84)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1435 | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite: 64.2 (#57)
- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

| Benchmark | Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1435 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1420 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1445 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1559 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite better than Mistral Small?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 3.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite lists at $0.30 and $2.50.

### Is Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite or Mistral Small better for coding?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite and Mistral Small share?

25 benchmarks have published results for both models. Gemini 3.5 Flash Lite has 39 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.