# Mistral Small 3 vs StarCoder 2 7B

> Mistral Small 3 has enough public results to be ranked (#278); StarCoder 2 7B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-vs-starcoder-2-7b
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 1 category and StarCoder 2 7B in 0 categories; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is BigCodeBench Complete: 50.4% for Mistral Small 3 and 27.7% for StarCoder 2 7B.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 31.2 | 37.0 |
| Rank | 278 | — |
| Context | 33K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.08 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
- StarCoder 2 7B: 34.8

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | 27.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | — |
| HumanEval+ | — | 29.9% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.07 | 93.56 |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | — |
| WinoGrande | — | 57.1% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | — |
| GSM8K | — | 32.7% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | — |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | — |
| ARC (AI2) Challenge | — | 38.7% |
| MMLU | — | 38.8% |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | — |
| LMArena French | 1203 | — |
| LMArena German | 1211 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
- StarCoder 2 7B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | StarCoder 2 7B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3 better than StarCoder 2 7B?

Mistral Small 3 has enough public results to be ranked (#278); StarCoder 2 7B does not yet, so treat this comparison as directional.

### Is Mistral Small 3 or StarCoder 2 7B better for coding?

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.5 versus 34.8 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and StarCoder 2 7B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and StarCoder 2 7B has 7.