# Mistral Small 3.1 vs Sonar

> Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 2.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-1-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in math, where Sonar leads 31.3 to 13.7.
- Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper at $0.35 / $0.56 per million input/output tokens, against $1 / $1 for Sonar.
- Mistral Small 3.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 31.4 | 37.8 |
| Rank | 263 | 184 |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.35 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $0.56 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.7 (#175)
- Sonar: 35.1 (#217)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1309 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3.1: 18.9 (#249)
- Sonar: 20.3 (#221)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1278 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.48 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3.1: 13.7 (#295)
- Sonar: 31.3 (#197)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.9% | — |
| Omni-MATH | 24.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1261 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#266)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 41.9% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | 61% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1258 | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small 3.1: 32.6 (#93)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1136 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.4 (#204)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1254 | — |
| LMArena French | 1270 | — |
| LMArena German | 1266 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1210 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1206 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1263 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1283 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3.1: 63.8 (#225)
- Sonar: 71.5 (#146)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| IFEval | 75% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1264 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#172)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1300 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.2 (#254)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#166)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1278 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1253 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 761 | — |
| WildBench | 78.8% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1270 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 better than Sonar?

Sonar is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.8 to 31.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 2.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Sonar's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.1 or Sonar?

Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.35 per million input tokens and $0.56 per million output tokens; Sonar lists at $1 and $1.

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 or Sonar better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 35.1 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.1 and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.1 has 28 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.