# Granite 3.1 8b Instruct vs Mistral Small

> Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/granite-3-1-8b-instruct-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 13

## Summary

- They share 13 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct scores higher in 4 categories and Mistral Small in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Small leads 52.5 to 35.5.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 27.1% for Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and 37.1% for Mistral Small.

## Snapshot

| | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 32.4 | 33.4 |
| Rank | 258 | 243 |
| Context | — | 262K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 34.5 (#233)
- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1186 | 1362 |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 24.1 (#120)
- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.1% | 37.1% |

## Reasoning

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 22.1 (#207)
- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1145 | 1335 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| DTBench | — | 70.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| LMCA | — | 20.6% |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |

## Math

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 33.0 (#209)
- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1152 | 1341 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |

## Knowledge

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 31.1 (#220)
- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1142 | 1291 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: —
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 30.9 (#260)
- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1099 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1145 | 1340 |
| LMArena Russian | 1092 | 1324 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena German | — | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1259 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 58.6 (#259)
- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1131 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |

## Long Context

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.2 (#241)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1162 | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Granite 3.1 8b Instruct: 35.5 (#266)
- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

| Benchmark | Granite 3.1 8b Instruct | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1150 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1129 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1108 | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct better than Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.4 to 32.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Granite 3.1 8b Instruct or Mistral Small better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.5 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### How many benchmarks do Granite 3.1 8b Instruct and Mistral Small share?

13 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 3.1 8b Instruct has 13 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.