# Mistral Large 3 vs Mistral Small

> Mistral Large 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-large-3-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 20

## Summary

- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Large 3 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Mistral Large 3 leads 38.7 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 50.9% for Mistral Large 3 and 37.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $0.75 for Mistral Large 3.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 39.1 | 33.4 |
| Rank | 176 | 243 |
| Context | 262K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.25 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $0.75 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Large 3: 34.4 (#237)
- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1448 | 1362 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1230 | — |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Large 3: —
- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)

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

## Reasoning

- Mistral Large 3: 15.2 (#319)
- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 50.9% | 37.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1429 | 1335 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 7.5% | — |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Thematic Generalization | 23% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| DTBench | — | 70.9% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| LMCA | — | 20.6% |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |

## Math

- Mistral Large 3: 38.7 (#129)
- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1414 | 1341 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Large 3: 36.0 (#177)
- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 14.5% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1421 | 1291 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.5% |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Large 3: 38.2 (#66)
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1221 | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Large 3: 52.5 (#84)
- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1413 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1447 | 1340 |
| LMArena French | 1455 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1437 | 1340 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1394 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1384 | 1259 |
| LMArena Russian | 1411 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1440 | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Large 3: 74.0 (#108)
- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1403 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |

## Long Context

- Mistral Large 3: 43.1 (#105)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1413 | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Large 3: 60.0 (#101)
- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)

| Benchmark | Mistral Large 3 | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1428 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1386 | 1305 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1429 | 1344 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1412 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Large 3 better than Mistral Small?

Mistral Large 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.1 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Large 3 or Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Mistral Large 3 lists at $0.25 and $0.75.

### Is Mistral Large 3 or Mistral Small better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (34.4 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Large 3 and Mistral Small share?

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Large 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.