# Ministral 3B vs Mistral Small

> Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 6.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-3b-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 5

## Summary

- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small leads 30.9 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 46.8% for Mistral Small.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 25.6 | 33.1 |
| Rank | 336 | 238 |
| Context | 128K | 256K |
| Input $/M | $0.04 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $0.04 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1363 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278)
- Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51.7% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | 20.6% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1336 |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.08 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |

## Math

- Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257)
- Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | 46.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1341 |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297)
- Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1293 |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1342 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena German | — | 1341 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1260 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1310 |

## Long Context

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 3B: —
- Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1304 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 3B better than Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 6.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Mistral Small?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Small does, with 256K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Mistral Small share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.