# Mistral Nemo vs Mistral Small

> Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 25.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Nemo costs 1.7× 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/mistral-nemo-vs-mistral-small
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Nemo scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Small leads 52.6 to 28.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 10.8% for Mistral Nemo and 46.8% for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Nemo is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 25.9 | 33.1 |
| Rank | 332 | 238 |
| Context | 128K | 256K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $0.60 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Nemo: —
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | 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

- Mistral Nemo: 23.3 (#118)
- Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 27.6% | 37.1% |
| BALROG | 17.6% | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Nemo: 19.9 (#230)
- Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 48.6% | 70.9% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1336 |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| LMCA | — | 20.6% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.63 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
| PIQA | 83.5% | — |

## Math

- Mistral Nemo: 23.5 (#263)
- Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 10.8% | 46.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1341 |
| GSM8K | 84.2% | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Nemo: 12.3 (#293)
- Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 29.9% | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1293 |
| BoolQ | 82.5% | — |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Nemo: —
- Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Nemo: —
- Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | 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

- Mistral Nemo: —
- Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1310 |

## Long Context

- Mistral Nemo: —
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Nemo: 28.6 (#291)
- Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)

| Benchmark | Mistral Nemo | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1304 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 881 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Nemo better than Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 25.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Nemo costs 1.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Nemo or Mistral Small?

Mistral Nemo is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 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 Mistral Nemo and Mistral Small share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Nemo has 10 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.