# Mistral Small 3.1 vs Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct

> Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 27.4 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-1-vs-phi-3-mini-4k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher in 6 categories and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct in 2 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in instruction following, where Mistral Small 3.1 leads 63.8 to 48.0.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 31.4 | 27.4 |
| Rank | 263 | 324 |
| Context | 128K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.35 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.56 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.7 (#175)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.1 (#319)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1309 | 1093 |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 15.5% |
| HumanEval+ | — | 59.1% |
| MBPP+ | — | 54.2% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3.1: 18.9 (#249)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 13.6 (#326)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1278 | 1072 |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 26.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 34.7% |
| Adversarial NLI | — | 52.8% |
| BIG-Bench Hard | — | 71.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.48 | — |
| HellaSwag | — | 76.7% |
| LiveBench | — | 22.4% |
| WinoGrande | — | 70.8% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3.1: 13.7 (#295)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 24.5 (#258)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1261 | 1111 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 24.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 15.7% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#266)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 27.9 (#241)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1258 | 1045 |
| GPQA Diamond | 41.9% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 61% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.2% | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 84.9% |
| MMLU | — | 68.8% |
| OpenBookQA | — | 88% |
| TriviaQA | — | 64% |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small 3.1: 32.6 (#93)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1136 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.4 (#204)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 26.5 (#275)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1255 | 1021 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1254 | 1021 |
| LMArena French | 1270 | 1075 |
| LMArena German | 1266 | 1044 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1210 | 935 |
| LMArena Korean | 1206 | 905 |
| LMArena Russian | 1263 | 1022 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1283 | 1084 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3.1: 63.8 (#225)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 48.0 (#298)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1264 | 1053 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 39.1% |
| IFEval | 75% | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#172)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 31.7 (#271)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1300 | 1044 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.2 (#254)
- Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct: 27.7 (#295)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1278 | 1073 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1253 | 1037 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1270 | 1018 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 761 | — |
| WildBench | 78.8% | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 9.2% |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 better than Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct?

Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 27.4 on the Noometry Index.

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 or Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 26.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.1 and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct share?

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.1 has 28 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Mini 4k Instruct has 35.