Model comparison
Granite 4.0 Micro vs Mistral Small 3
Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Granite 4.0 Micro scores higher in 3 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 2 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small 3 leads 25.0 to 9.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 28.3% for Granite 4.0 Micro and 47.3% for Mistral Small 3.
- Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper at $0.017 / $0.11 per million input/output tokens, against $0.05 / $0.08 for Mistral Small 3.
- Granite 4.0 Micro accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | IBM | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 28.8 | 30.9 |
| Released | 2025-10-02 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 131K | 33K |
| Max output | 118K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.017 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.11 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 8 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1246 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
Reasoning Too close to call
Granite 4.0 Micro: 18.5 (#261), Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 127.06 |
Math Mistral Small 3 leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 11.2 (#301), Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 2.8% | 6.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 20.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1240 |
Knowledge Mistral Small 3 leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 9.9 (#299), Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 28.3% | 47.3% |
| MMLU-Pro | 39.5% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 30.7% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1202 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | 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 Granite 4.0 Micro leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 70.0 (#164), Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 84.9% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1214 |
Long Context Not comparable
Granite 4.0 Micro: —, Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Granite 4.0 Micro leads
Granite 4.0 Micro: 46.7 (#212), Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
| Benchmark | Granite 4.0 Micro | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 707 |
| WildBench | 67% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1217 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Granite 4.0 Micro better than Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 28.8 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Granite 4.0 Micro or Mistral Small 3?
Granite 4.0 Micro is cheaper. It lists at $0.017 per million input tokens and $0.11 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3 lists at $0.05 and $0.08.
Which has the bigger context window?
Granite 4.0 Micro does, with 131K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Granite 4.0 Micro and Mistral Small 3 share?
3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Granite 4.0 Micro has 8 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.