Model comparison
Mistral Small vs Nemotron 3.5 Lightning
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
NVIDIASummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 3 categories and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning in 5 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads 34.7 to 15.4.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper at $0.06 / $0.16 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.60 for Mistral Small.
- Nemotron 3.5 Lightning accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | NVIDIA |
| Noometry Index | 33.1 | 39.3 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2026-08-11 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 256K | 262K |
| Max output | 256K | 262K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.06 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.60 | $0.16 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 18 |
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Category by category
Coding Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1370 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |
Reasoning Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 25.7 (#128)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1336 | 1335 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| DTBench | 70.9% | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| LMCA | 20.6% | — |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |
Math Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 34.7 (#156)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1355 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | — |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
Knowledge Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 36.9 (#154)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1293 | 1354 |
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 44.0 (#175)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1292 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1342 | 1356 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1369 |
| LMArena German | 1341 | 1280 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | 1213 |
| LMArena Korean | 1260 | 1233 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1257 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | 1321 |
Instruction Following Nemotron 3.5 Lightning leads
Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 69.8 (#166)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1317 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
Long Context Too close to call
Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 39.9 (#160)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1312 |
Writing & Preference Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165), Nemotron 3.5 Lightning: 48.5 (#198)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Nemotron 3.5 Lightning |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1324 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1304 | 1254 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1327 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1280 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small better than Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.3 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning is cheaper. It lists at $0.06 per million input tokens and $0.16 per million output tokens; Mistral Small lists at $0.15 and $0.60.
Is Mistral Small or Nemotron 3.5 Lightning better for coding?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.6 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Nemotron 3.5 Lightning does, with 262K tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Nemotron 3.5 Lightning has 18.