Model comparison
Ministral 3B vs Mistral Small
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 6.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Small in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Small leads 30.9 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 46.8% for Mistral Small.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 256K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Ministral 3B | Mistral Small | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 25.6 | 33.1 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2024-02-26 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 256K |
| Max output | 128K | 256K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.15 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.60 |
| Results tracked | 6 | 39 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 26.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 36.1% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 36.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1363 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.6% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 497.62 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 37.1% |
Reasoning Mistral Small leads
Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278), Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51.7% | 70.9% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | 20.6% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 37.8% |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 44.8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1336 |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 53.7% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.08 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 44% |
Math Ministral 3B leads
Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257), Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | 46.8% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 5.8% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 39.9% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1341 |
Knowledge Mistral Small leads
Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297), Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 47.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | 5.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1293 |
| MMLU | — | 68.7% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1142 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1315 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1342 |
| LMArena French | — | 1337 |
| LMArena German | — | 1341 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1275 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1260 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1346 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 63.7% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1310 |
Long Context Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1327 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Mistral Small |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1338 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1304 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1344 |
| LiveBench Language | — | 30.5% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 3B better than Mistral Small?
Mistral Small is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.1 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 6.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Small's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Mistral Small?
Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small does, with 256K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Mistral Small share?
5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Small has 39.