# GPT-4.1 mini vs Mistral Small 3.1

> GPT-4.1 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1 mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-4-1-mini-vs-mistral-small-3-1
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 28

## Summary

- They share 28 benchmarks with published results for both. GPT-4.1 mini scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small 3.1 in 3 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where GPT-4.1 mini leads 34.7 to 22.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 44.7% for GPT-4.1 mini 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 $0.40 / $1.60 for GPT-4.1 mini.
- GPT-4.1 mini accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 128K.
- Mistral Small 3.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 33.5 | 31.4 |
| Rank | 232 | 263 |
| Context | 1.05M | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.40 | $0.35 |
| Output $/M | $1.60 | $0.56 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-4.1 mini: 30.4 (#286)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.7 (#175)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1367 | 1309 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 23.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 32.4% | — |
| SciCode | 40.4% | — |
| WeirdML | 37.6% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 48.9% | — |
| CadEval | 16% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4.1 mini: 33.0 (#52)
- Mistral Small 3.1: —

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 50.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4.1 mini: 10.9 (#335)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 18.9 (#249)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | 1% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1349 | 1278 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.01 | 127.48 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 48.6% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 3.5% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | — |
| DTBench | 68.8% | — |
| LMCA | 21.1% | — |

## Math

- GPT-4.1 mini: 23.1 (#264)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 13.7 (#295)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 44.7% | 3.9% |
| Omni-MATH | 49.1% | 24.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1343 | 1261 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 6.7% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 87.3% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#183)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#266)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 65.8% | 41.9% |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.3% | 61% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 61.4% | 39.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1338 | 1258 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4.1 mini: 35.2 (#77)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 32.6 (#93)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1181 | 1136 |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4.1 mini: 45.9 (#161)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.4 (#204)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1255 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1329 | 1254 |
| LMArena French | 1357 | 1270 |
| LMArena German | 1349 | 1266 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1291 | 1210 |
| LMArena Korean | 1298 | 1206 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1263 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1319 | 1283 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4.1 mini: 73.9 (#113)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 63.8 (#225)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 90.4% | 75% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1332 | 1264 |

## Long Context

- GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#270)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#172)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1344 | 1300 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4.1 mini: 48.8 (#193)
- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.2 (#254)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1341 | 1278 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1300 | 1253 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1147 | 761 |
| WildBench | 83.8% | 78.8% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1354 | 1270 |

## FAQ

### Is GPT-4.1 mini better than Mistral Small 3.1?

GPT-4.1 mini is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.5 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when GPT-4.1 mini's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 mini 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; GPT-4.1 mini lists at $0.40 and $1.60.

### Is GPT-4.1 mini or Mistral Small 3.1 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 30.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do GPT-4.1 mini and Mistral Small 3.1 share?

28 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 mini has 47 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3.1 has 28.