# Grok 4.5 vs Magistral Small

> Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/grok-4-5-vs-magistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 10

## Summary

- They share 10 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 4.5 scores higher in 4 categories and Magistral Small in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Grok 4.5 leads 56.1 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is ARC-AGI-1: 87.2% for Grok 4.5 and 5% for Magistral Small.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Grok 4.5.
- Grok 4.5 accepts more context: 500K tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 55.0 | 30.2 |
| Rank | 25 | 296 |
| Context | 500K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.50 |
| Output $/M | $6 | $1.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Grok 4.5: 52.2 (#35)
- Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 54.1% | 35.2% |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1553 | — |
| WeirdML | 46.4% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1474 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,309 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Grok 4.5: 44.4 (#17)
- Magistral Small: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 56.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 47.9% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 23.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.4% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 14% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1213 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,887 | — |

## Reasoning

- Grok 4.5: 56.1 (#25)
- Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | 0% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.5% | 6.3% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 87.2% | 5% |
| CritPt | 15.4% | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 36% | 3% |
| DTBench | 96.5% | 61.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 153.92 | 133.19 |
| SimpleBench | 70% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 79.9% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | — |
| LMCA | 45.2% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 74.4% | — |

## Math

- Grok 4.5: 60.9 (#35)
- Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 97.8% | 30% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 57.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 24.4% | — |
| ProofBench | 31% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1459 | — |

## Knowledge

- Grok 4.5: 62.3 (#24)
- Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223)

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.4% | 56.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | 48.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1466 | — |

## Multimodal

- Grok 4.5: 37.6 (#72)
- Magistral Small: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1288 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 27.3% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 22.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | — |

## Multilingual

- Grok 4.5: 54.4 (#42)
- Magistral Small: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1496 | — |
| LMArena French | 1456 | — |
| LMArena German | 1446 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1448 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1450 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Grok 4.5: 76.0 (#48)
- Magistral Small: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1446 | — |

## Long Context

- Grok 4.5: 44.8 (#56)
- Magistral Small: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Grok 4.5: 65.8 (#42)
- Magistral Small: —

| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Magistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1448 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1579 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1456 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Grok 4.5 better than Magistral Small?

Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Grok 4.5 or Magistral Small?

Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Grok 4.5 lists at $2 and $6.

### Is Grok 4.5 or Magistral Small better for coding?

Grok 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 52.2 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Grok 4.5 does, with 500K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Grok 4.5 and Magistral Small share?

10 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.5 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Small has 10.
