# Llama 3.2 3B vs Mistral Medium

> Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 25× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/llama-3-2-3b-vs-mistral-medium
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 14

## Summary

- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Llama 3.2 3B scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Medium in 7 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium leads 60.0 to 24.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard: 21.9% for Llama 3.2 3B and 37.7% for Mistral Medium.
- Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.33 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium.
- Mistral Medium accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

## Snapshot

| | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Meta | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 28.9 | 36.3 |
| Rank | 321 | 218 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.33 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Llama 3.2 3B: 27.6 (#319)
- Mistral Medium: 34.2 (#243)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1098 | 1434 |
| FrontierCode | — | 8% |
| SciCode | — | 40.2% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 23.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 28.3% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 763.98 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Llama 3.2 3B: 20.1 (#143)
- Mistral Medium: 28.3 (#90)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 21.9% | 37.7% |
| BALROG | 10.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Llama 3.2 3B: 21.0 (#228)
- Mistral Medium: 24.0 (#167)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1095 | 1426 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 50% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| DTBench | — | 75.5% |
| LMCA | — | 26.1% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 26.9% |

## Math

- Llama 3.2 3B: 32.4 (#214)
- Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#245)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1126 | 1408 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 32.2% |
| ProofBench | — | 9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 81.6% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 0.3% |

## Knowledge

- Llama 3.2 3B: 29.7 (#235)
- Mistral Medium: 25.0 (#265)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1090 | 1408 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 59.5% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | — | 4.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 22.7% |

## Multimodal

- Llama 3.2 3B: —
- Mistral Medium: 35.3 (#88)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1172 |

## Multilingual

- Llama 3.2 3B: 26.2 (#281)
- Mistral Medium: 52.1 (#91)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1019 | 1408 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1017 | 1447 |
| LMArena German | 1056 | 1432 |
| LMArena Russian | 949 | 1411 |
| LMArena French | — | 1459 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1378 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1380 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1433 |

## Instruction Following

- Llama 3.2 3B: 56.0 (#275)
- Mistral Medium: 73.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1089 | 1398 |

## Long Context

- Llama 3.2 3B: 33.4 (#261)
- Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#114)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1100 | 1406 |

## Writing & Preference

- Llama 3.2 3B: 24.7 (#307)
- Mistral Medium: 60.0 (#103)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.2 3B | Mistral Medium |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1110 | 1424 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1094 | 1391 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1105 | 1418 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 77.3% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 595 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Llama 3.2 3B better than Mistral Medium?

Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 28.9 on the Noometry Index. Llama 3.2 3B costs 25× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Llama 3.2 3B or Mistral Medium?

Llama 3.2 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.33 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is Llama 3.2 3B or Mistral Medium better for coding?

Mistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.2 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Llama 3.2 3B and Mistral Medium share?

14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Llama 3.2 3B has 18 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium has 36.