# Grok 3 vs Mistral Small 3

> Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.9 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-3-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 3 scores higher in 7 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Grok 3 leads 55.8 to 32.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 55.6% for Grok 3 and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 39.9 | 31.2 |
| Rank | 157 | 278 |
| Context | — | 33K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.08 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok 3: 41.9 (#115)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1432 | 1246 |
| Aider Polyglot | 53.3% | — |
| WeirdML | 37.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok 3: 30.5 (#76)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | 29.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok 3: 13.7 (#333)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1434 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 138.33 | 127.07 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | 36.1% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 61.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |

## Math

- Grok 3: 38.0 (#145)
- Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 55.6% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1391 | 1240 |
| Omni-MATH | 46.4% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 88.7% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 3.8% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | 0% | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok 3: 46.2 (#82)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 75.8% | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | 14.2% | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1421 | 1202 |
| MMLU-Pro | 78.8% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.8% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 65% | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok 3: 52.3 (#87)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1410 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1448 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1460 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1431 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1387 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1373 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1416 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1417 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok 3: 75.0 (#73)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1409 | 1214 |
| IFEval | 88.4% | — |

## Long Context

- Grok 3: 38.7 (#192)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1439 | 1246 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 58.3% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok 3: 55.8 (#141)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)

| Benchmark | Grok 3 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1426 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1414 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1186 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1425 | 1217 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 76.4% | — |
| WildBench | 84.9% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok 3 better than Mistral Small 3?

Grok 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.9 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Grok 3 or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Grok 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.9 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Grok 3 and Mistral Small 3 share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 3 has 40 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.