# GPT-4.1 mini vs Mistral Small

> GPT-4.1 mini and Mistral Small score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.6 vs 33.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/gpt-4-1-mini-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- 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 in 4 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Mistral Small leads 19.8 to 10.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 87.3% for GPT-4.1 mini and 46.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 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 262K.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 33.6 | 33.4 |
| Rank | 240 | 243 |
| Context | 1.05M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.40 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $1.60 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- GPT-4.1 mini: 30.6 (#293)
- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 40.4% | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 48.9% | 36.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1367 | 1362 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 23.9% | — |
| Aider Polyglot | 32.4% | — |
| WeirdML | 37.6% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| CadEval | 16% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- GPT-4.1 mini: 33.3 (#55)
- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 50.5% | 37.1% |

## Reasoning

- GPT-4.1 mini: 10.8 (#340)
- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 48.6% | 37.8% |
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1349 | 1335 |
| DTBench | 68.8% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 21.1% | 20.6% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 3.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 7% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 7% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 135.01 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |

## Math

- GPT-4.1 mini: 24.1 (#270)
- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 44.7% | 5.8% |
| LMArena Math | 1343 | 1341 |
| MATH Level 5 | 87.3% | 46.8% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 6.7% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 49.1% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 4.5% | — |

## Knowledge

- GPT-4.1 mini: 34.7 (#194)
- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 65.8% | 47.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1338 | 1291 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 12.7% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.3% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 61.4% | — |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- GPT-4.1 mini: 35.8 (#82)
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1181 | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- GPT-4.1 mini: 45.7 (#166)
- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1318 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1329 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1358 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1351 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1290 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1298 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1319 | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- GPT-4.1 mini: 73.7 (#118)
- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1333 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
| IFEval | 90.4% | — |

## Long Context

- GPT-4.1 mini: 31.8 (#275)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1344 | 1327 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 44.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- GPT-4.1 mini: 48.6 (#199)
- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

| Benchmark | GPT-4.1 mini | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1340 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1300 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1354 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1147 | — |
| WildBench | 83.8% | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

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

GPT-4.1 mini and Mistral Small score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.6 vs 33.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, GPT-4.1 mini or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; GPT-4.1 mini lists at $0.40 and $1.60.

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

Mistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.0 versus 30.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

GPT-4.1 mini does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.

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

28 benchmarks have published results for both models. GPT-4.1 mini has 47 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.