Model comparison

Magistral Medium vs Magistral Small

Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.8 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.

Magistral Medium Mistral AI

34.8

Rank #224 Confirmed

Magistral Small Mistral AI

29.9

Rank #289 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 4 categories and Magistral Small in 0 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in math, where Magistral Medium leads 32.4 to 24.9.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 16.2% for Magistral Medium and 6.3% for Magistral Small.
  • Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.

Side by side

Magistral Medium and Magistral Small specifications
Magistral MediumMagistral Small
ProviderMistral AIMistral AI
Noometry Index34.829.9
Released2025-03-172025-06-10
WeightsOpenOpen
Context window128K128K
Max output16K40K
Input $ / M tokens$2$0.50
Output $ / M tokens$5$1.50
Results tracked2210

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Category by category

Coding Too close to call

Magistral Medium: 38.6 (#161), Magistral Small: 37.8 (#172)

Coding benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
SciCode39.2%35.2%
LMArena Coding1319—

Reasoning Magistral Medium leads

Magistral Medium: 8.7 (#342), Magistral Small: 6.9 (#345)

Reasoning benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
ARC-AGI-20%0%
Kagi LLM Benchmark16.2%6.3%
ARC-AGI-16.1%5%
CritPt0.3%0.3%
Chess Puzzles—3%
LMArena Hard Prompts1267—
DTBench—61.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index—133.19

Math Magistral Medium leads

Magistral Medium: 32.4 (#187), Magistral Small: 24.9 (#253)

Math benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—30%
LMArena Math1249—

Knowledge Magistral Medium leads

Magistral Medium: 32.9 (#199), Magistral Small: 30.9 (#215)

Knowledge benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
GPQA Diamond—56.1%
LMArena Expert1222—

Multilingual Not comparable

Magistral Medium: 39.8 (#219), Magistral Small: —

Multilingual benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
LMArena Non-English1232—
LMArena Chinese1225—
LMArena French1268—
LMArena German1248—
LMArena Japanese1176—
LMArena Korean1125—
LMArena Russian1224—
LMArena Spanish1269—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Magistral Medium: 66.2 (#207), Magistral Small: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
LMArena Instruction Following1254—

Long Context Not comparable

Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#178), Magistral Small: —

Long Context benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
LMArena Longer Query1295—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Magistral Medium: 46.5 (#214), Magistral Small: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
BenchmarkMagistral MediumMagistral Small
LMArena Text1255—
LMArena Creative Writing1245—
LMArena Multi-Turn1275—

Frequently asked questions

Is Magistral Medium better than Magistral Small?

Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.8 to 29.9 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium or Magistral Small?

Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.

Is Magistral Medium or Magistral Small better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (38.6 vs 37.8); test both on your own repository before choosing.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 128K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Magistral Small share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Magistral Small has 10.

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