# Mistral Small 3 vs Phi-4 Mini

> Mistral Small 3 and Phi-4 Mini score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.9 vs 30.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-vs-phi-4-mini
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in coding, where Mistral Small 3 leads 36.0 to 27.6.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.075 / $0.30 for Phi-4 Mini.
- Phi-4 Mini accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 33K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 30.4 |
| Rank | 268 | 280 |
| Context | 33K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.075 |
| Output $/M | $0.08 | $0.30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
- Phi-4 Mini: 27.6 (#312)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 10.8% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
- Phi-4 Mini: 21.7 (#190)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.06 | — |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
- Phi-4 Mini: 24.8 (#261)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 23.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | — |
| LMArena French | 1202 | — |
| LMArena German | 1211 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
- Phi-4 Mini: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Phi-4 Mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3 better than Phi-4 Mini?

Mistral Small 3 and Phi-4 Mini score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.9 vs 30.4), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Phi-4 Mini?

Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Phi-4 Mini lists at $0.075 and $0.30.

### Is Mistral Small 3 or Phi-4 Mini better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 27.6 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Phi-4 Mini does, with 128K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Phi-4 Mini share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Phi-4 Mini has 3.