# MiniMax M1 vs Mistral Small

> MiniMax M1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.3 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax M1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/minimax-m1-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. MiniMax M1 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small in 0 categories; 6 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where MiniMax M1 leads 37.5 to 16.4.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.55 / $2.20 for MiniMax M1.
- MiniMax M1 accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.

## Snapshot

| | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | MiniMax | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 40.3 | 33.4 |
| Rank | 150 | 243 |
| Context | 1M | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.55 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $2.20 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- MiniMax M1: 39.9 (#153)
- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1359 | 1362 |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- MiniMax M1: —
- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |

## Reasoning

- MiniMax M1: 26.9 (#126)
- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1339 | 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

- MiniMax M1: 37.5 (#151)
- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1361 | 1341 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |

## Knowledge

- MiniMax M1: 36.4 (#170)
- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1317 | 1291 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- MiniMax M1: —
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- MiniMax M1: 45.8 (#163)
- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1319 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1360 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1370 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1350 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1217 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1266 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1329 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1353 | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- MiniMax M1: 69.3 (#174)
- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1312 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |

## Long Context

- MiniMax M1: 41.4 (#141)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1326 | 1327 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | 69.4% | — |

## Writing & Preference

- MiniMax M1: 53.1 (#161)
- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

| Benchmark | MiniMax M1 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1343 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1298 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1335 | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is MiniMax M1 better than Mistral Small?

MiniMax M1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.3 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when MiniMax M1's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, MiniMax M1 or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; MiniMax M1 lists at $0.55 and $2.20.

### Is MiniMax M1 or Mistral Small better for coding?

MiniMax M1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.9 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

MiniMax M1 does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do MiniMax M1 and Mistral Small share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. MiniMax M1 has 18 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.