# Mistral vs Mistral Small

> Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 29.4 on the Noometry Index.

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

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral scores higher in 2 categories and Mistral Small in 6 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Small leads 52.6 to 37.2.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 29.4 | 33.1 |
| Rank | 297 | 238 |
| Context | — | 256K |
| Input $/M | — | $0.15 |
| Output $/M | — | $0.60 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral: 33.2 (#249)
- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1162 | 1363 |
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral: —
- Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)

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

## Reasoning

- Mistral: 21.3 (#199)
- Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1149 | 1336 |
| 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: 20.5 (#275)
- Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1180 | 1341 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| Omni-MATH | 7.2% | — |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 46.8% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral: 16.3 (#283)
- Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1125 | 1293 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | 27.7% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.1% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.3% | — |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |

## Multimodal

- Mistral: —
- Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |

## Multilingual

- Mistral: 33.0 (#249)
- Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1129 | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1109 | 1342 |
| LMArena French | 1179 | 1337 |
| LMArena German | 1155 | 1341 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1012 | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | 1032 | 1260 |
| LMArena Russian | 1168 | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1143 | 1346 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral: 52.9 (#283)
- Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1152 | 1310 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
| IFEval | 56.8% | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral: 35.0 (#240)
- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1154 | 1327 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral: 37.2 (#255)
- Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)

| Benchmark | Mistral | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1165 | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1158 | 1304 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1147 | 1344 |
| WildBench | 66% | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral better than Mistral Small?

Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 29.4 on the Noometry Index.

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

They score almost the same on coding (33.2 vs 33.5); test both on your own repository before choosing.

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

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral has 22 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.