# Llama 3.1-405B vs Mistral Small 3

> Llama 3.1-405B and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.4 vs 30.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-1-405b-vs-mistral-small-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 21

## Summary

- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.1-405B scores higher in 6 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Llama 3.1-405B leads 39.1 to 32.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Confabulations: 17.6% for Llama 3.1-405B and 25.2% for Mistral Small 3.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 30.4 | 30.9 |
| Rank | 279 | 268 |
| Context | — | 33K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.05 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.08 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 3.1-405B: 32.7 (#257)
- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1291 | 1246 |
| WeirdML | 21.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3.1-405B: 20.9 (#131)
- Mistral Small 3: —

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| TheAgentCompany | 7.4% | — |
| Cybench | 7.5% | — |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3.1-405B: 16.4 (#293)
- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1270 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 128.76 | 127.06 |
| SimpleBench | 23% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 45% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| DTBench | 61.4% | — |
| BIG-Bench Hard | 82.9% | — |
| ForecastBench | 59.9 | — |
| HellaSwag | 89.2% | — |
| PIQA | 85.9% | — |
| WinoGrande | 89.2% | — |

## Math

- Llama 3.1-405B: 17.3 (#283)
- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 9.7% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1281 | 1240 |
| Omni-MATH | 24.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 49.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3.1-405B: 30.4 (#221)
- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 50.9% | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | 17.6% | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | 1243 | 1202 |
| MMLU-Pro | 72.3% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 52.2% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | 95.3% | — |
| MMLU | 84.5% | — |
| TriviaQA | 82.7% | — |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3.1-405B: 40.9 (#209)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1248 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1242 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1278 | 1202 |
| LMArena German | 1252 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1208 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1184 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1265 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1259 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3.1-405B: 66.1 (#209)
- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1259 | 1214 |
| IFEval | 81.1% | — |

## Long Context

- Llama 3.1-405B: 38.4 (#192)
- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1266 | 1246 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3.1-405B: 39.1 (#246)
- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1-405B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1284 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1262 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 870 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1297 | 1217 |
| WildBench | 78.3% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3.1-405B better than Mistral Small 3?

Llama 3.1-405B and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.4 vs 30.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Llama 3.1-405B or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 32.7 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3.1-405B and Mistral Small 3 share?

21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.1-405B has 42 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.