Model comparison
Codestral vs Mistral Small 3
Codestral and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.1 vs 30.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small 3 in 1 category; one gap is clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Mistral Small 3 leads 36.0 to 26.9.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.30 / $0.90 for Codestral.
- Codestral accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Codestral | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 30.9 |
| Released | 2024-05-29 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 256K | 33K |
| Max output | 4K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3 leads
Codestral: 26.9 (#316), Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | 50.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1246 |
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |
Reasoning Too close to call
Codestral: 19.1 (#244), Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.06 |
Math Not comparable
Codestral: —, Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1240 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Codestral: —, Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 47.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1202 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Codestral: —, Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1204 |
| LMArena French | — | 1202 |
| LMArena German | — | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1216 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Codestral: —, Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1214 |
Long Context Not comparable
Codestral: —, Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Codestral: —, Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1217 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Codestral better than Mistral Small 3?
Codestral and Mistral Small 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (30.1 vs 30.9), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Codestral or Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Codestral lists at $0.30 and $0.90.
Is Codestral or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 26.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Codestral does, with 256K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Codestral and Mistral Small 3 share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.