# Mistral Small vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning

> Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-vs-nemotron-3-5-lightning
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 3 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 34.7 to 15.4.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 33.1 | 39.3 |
| Rank | 238 | 156 |
| Context | 256K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $0.06 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $0.16 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1370 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1336 | 1335 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| DTBench | 70.9% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| LMCA | 20.6% | — |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |

## Math

- Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1355 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1293 | 1354 |
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1292 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1342 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1341 | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | 1213 |
| LMArena Korean | 1260 | 1233 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | 1321 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1317 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1312 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1324 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1304 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1327 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.

### Is Mistral Small or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 256K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.