vs
4:3
overall capability wins (0 ties across 7 scored). Mistral Small leads overall.
- Reasoning1:2
- Coding1:1
- Pricing3:0
- Speed2:0
- Specs2:0
Verdict
Mistral Small edges reasoning & knowledge; Ministral 3 3B offers ~2.0x larger context (256K vs 128K); Ministral 3 3B allows ~4.0x more max output (33K vs 8K).
- Mistral Small edges reasoning & knowledge
- Ministral 3 3B offers ~2.0x larger context (256K vs 128K)
- Ministral 3 3B allows ~4.0x more max output (33K vs 8K)
- Ministral 3 3B ships open weights (Apache 2.0)
- Ministral 3 3B is ~3.0x cheaper on a blended token basis than Mistral Small
Cost for 1M in + 250K out
Illustrative chat workload at primary-provider list prices.
- Ministral 3 3B
- $0.13
- Mistral Small
- $0.35
Ministral 3 3B is about 2.8x cheaper on this workload.
Price per 1M tokens
Full comparison
Organization
Mistral
Mistral
Family
Mistral
Mistral
License
Apache 2.0
Proprietary
Open weights
Yes
No
Release
Dec 1, 2025
Sep 17, 2024
Knowledge cutoff
-
-
API / provider
Mistral
Mistral
Modalities
text, image → text
text → text
Specs
Context window
256K
128K
Max output
33K
8K
Parameters
3B
—
Pricing
Input $/1M
$0.10
$0.20
Output $/1M
$0.10
$0.60
Blended $/1M (3∶1)
$0.10
$0.30
Speed
tok/s
180
110
TTFT (s)
0.15
0.25
Reasoning
MMLU-Pro
52.4
52.9
GPQA Diamond
35.8
38.1
Humanity's Last Exam
5.4
4.3
AIME 2025
22.0
—
MATH-500
—
56.3
Humanity's Last Exam (with tools)
—
—
AA-Omniscience Accuracy
9.0
—
AA-LCR v1.1
17.0
—
CritPt
—
—
MMMU-Pro
38.1
—
IFBench
26.8
—
Chartography
—
—
Chartography (With Tools)
—
—
Coding
SWE-bench Verified
—
—
SWE-bench Pro
—
—
SWE-bench Multilingual
—
—
LiveCodeBench
24.7
14.1
Terminal-Bench 2.1
0.0
—
Aider Polyglot
—
—
Terminal-Bench 3
—
—
BigCodeBench
—
—
SciCode
15.3
15.6
CursorBench
—
—
SWE-Rebench
—
—
NL2Repo-Bench
—
—
DeepSWE
—
—
WebDev Arena
—
—
Terminal-Bench 4.0
—
—
CursorBench 4.0
—
—
FrontierCode v1.1 (Main)
—
—
Arena
LMArena Elo
—
1,357
| Metric | Ministral 3 3B | Mistral Small | Delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Identity | |||
| Organization | Mistral | Mistral | — |
| Family | Mistral | Mistral | — |
| License | Apache 2.0 | Proprietary | — |
| Open weights | Yes | No | — |
| Release | Dec 1, 2025 | Sep 17, 2024 | — |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - | — |
| API / provider | Mistral | Mistral | — |
| Modalities | text, image → text | text → text | — |
| Specs | |||
| Context window | 256K | 128K | A +128K |
| Max output | 33K | 8K | A +25K |
| Parameters | 3B | — | — |
| Pricing | |||
| Input $/1M | $0.10 | $0.20 | A +$0.10 |
| Output $/1M | $0.10 | $0.60 | A +$0.50 |
| Blended $/1M (3∶1) | $0.10 | $0.30 | A +$0.20 |
| Speed | |||
| tok/s | 180 | 110 | A +70 |
| TTFT (s) | 0.15 | 0.25 | A +0.10 |
| Reasoning | |||
| MMLU-Pro | 52.4 | 52.9 | B +0.5 pts |
| GPQA Diamond | 35.8 | 38.1 | B +2.3 pts |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 5.4 | 4.3 | A +1.1 pts |
| AIME 2025 | 22.0 | — | — |
| MATH-500 | — | 56.3 | — |
| Humanity's Last Exam (with tools) | — | — | — |
| AA-Omniscience Accuracy | 9.0 | — | — |
| AA-LCR v1.1 | 17.0 | — | — |
| CritPt | — | — | — |
| MMMU-Pro | 38.1 | — | — |
| IFBench | 26.8 | — | — |
| Chartography | — | — | — |
| Chartography (With Tools) | — | — | — |
| Coding | |||
| SWE-bench Verified | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Pro | — | — | — |
| SWE-bench Multilingual | — | — | — |
| LiveCodeBench | 24.7 | 14.1 | A +10.6 pts |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 | 0.0 | — | — |
| Aider Polyglot | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 3 | — | — | — |
| BigCodeBench | — | — | — |
| SciCode | 15.3 | 15.6 | B +0.3 pts |
| CursorBench | — | — | — |
| SWE-Rebench | — | — | — |
| NL2Repo-Bench | — | — | — |
| DeepSWE | — | — | — |
| WebDev Arena | — | — | — |
| Terminal-Bench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| CursorBench 4.0 | — | — | — |
| FrontierCode v1.1 (Main) | — | — | — |
| Arena | |||
| LMArena Elo | — | 1,357 | — |
Ministral 3 3B
- Context
- 256K / 33K out
- Parameters
- 3B
- Price
- $0.10 / $0.10
- Speed
- 180 tok/s · 0.15s TTFT
- Modalities
- text, image → text
- License
- Apache 2.0
Tiny Ministral 3 multimodal model - cheapest Mistral hosted tier for edge and classification.
Mistral Small
- Context
- 128K / 8K out
- Parameters
- —
- Price
- $0.20 / $0.60
- Speed
- 110 tok/s · 0.25s TTFT
- Modalities
- text → text
- License
- Proprietary
Cost-efficient Mistral Small (mistral-small-2409) — production chat and light agents before Small 3 / 4.
Benchmark charts
Winner bars are emphasized. Per-benchmark deltas sit above each chart.