Model comparison
Grok 4.5 vs Mistral Small 3
Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 52× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Grok 4.5 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Small 3 in 0 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Grok 4.5 leads 60.9 to 16.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 97.8% for Grok 4.5 and 6.7% for Mistral Small 3.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $6 for Grok 4.5.
- Grok 4.5 accepts more context: 500K tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | xAI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 55.0 | 31.2 |
| Released | 2026-07-08 | 2025-01-30 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |
| Context window | 500K | 33K |
| Max output | 500K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.05 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $6 | $0.08 |
| Results tracked | 52 | 24 |
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Category by category
Coding Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 52.2 (#35), Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1474 | 1246 |
| DeepSWE | 53.8% | — |
| FrontierCode | 42.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | 1553 | — |
| SciCode | 54.1% | — |
| WeirdML | 46.4% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 45.3% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 50.4% |
| ALE-Bench | 1,309 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Grok 4.5: 44.4 (#17), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 56.2% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 47.9% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 23.4% | — |
| GBAEval | 65.4% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 14% | — |
| LMArena Search | 1213 | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 3,887 | — |
Reasoning Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 56.1 (#25), Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 36% | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1462 | 1233 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 153.92 | 127.07 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 52.6% | — |
| SimpleBench | 70% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 83.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 79.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 87.2% | — |
| CritPt | 15.4% | — |
| DTBench | 96.5% | — |
| LMCA | 45.2% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 74.4% | — |
Math Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 60.9 (#35), Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 97.8% | 6.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1459 | 1240 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 57.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 24.4% | — |
| ProofBench | 31% | — |
Knowledge Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 62.3 (#24), Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 93.4% | 47.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1466 | 1202 |
| SimpleQA Verified | 48.3% | — |
| Confabulations | — | 25.2% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Grok 4.5: 37.6 (#72), Mistral Small 3: —
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1288 | — |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 27.3% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 22.5% | — |
| LMArena Document | 1452 | — |
Multilingual Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 54.4 (#42), Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1440 | 1198 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1496 | 1204 |
| LMArena French | 1456 | 1203 |
| LMArena German | 1446 | 1211 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1428 | 1111 |
| LMArena Korean | 1404 | 1188 |
| LMArena Russian | 1448 | 1216 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1450 | — |
Instruction Following Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 76.0 (#48), Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1446 | 1214 |
Long Context Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 44.8 (#56), Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1463 | 1246 |
Writing & Preference Grok 4.5 leads
Grok 4.5: 65.8 (#42), Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280)
| Benchmark | Grok 4.5 | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1448 | 1234 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1442 | 1195 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1579 | 707 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1456 | 1217 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Grok 4.5 better than Mistral Small 3?
Grok 4.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 55.0 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 52× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Grok 4.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Grok 4.5 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; Grok 4.5 lists at $2 and $6.
Is Grok 4.5 or Mistral Small 3 better for coding?
Grok 4.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 52.2 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Grok 4.5 does, with 500K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Grok 4.5 and Mistral Small 3 share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Grok 4.5 has 52 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small 3 has 24.