# Mistral Small vs Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct

> Mistral Small and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.4 vs 33.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-vs-phi-3-medium-4k-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 6 categories and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct in 2 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Small leads 52.5 to 34.1.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Microsoft |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 33.0 |
| Rank | 243 | 250 |
| Context | 262K | — |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | — |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 32.9 (#268)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1362 | 1130 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 21.7 (#214)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1127 |
| 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: 16.4 (#293)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 33.4 (#202)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1173 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.2 (#229)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1291 | 1108 |
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 30.6 (#263)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1094 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1340 | 1108 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1110 |
| LMArena German | 1340 | 1101 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | 1042 |
| LMArena Korean | 1259 | 954 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1145 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | 1095 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 57.6 (#268)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1113 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.0 (#255)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1120 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
- Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct: 34.1 (#272)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1138 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1305 | 1107 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1088 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |

## FAQ

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

Mistral Small and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.4 vs 33.0), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

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

Mistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 34.0 versus 32.9 in the Noometry coding category.

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

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Phi 3 Medium 4k Instruct has 17.