Ministral 3 3B vs Mistral Small 3.1

Which is better for the money: Ministral 3 3B by Mistral or Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-27.

Trade-off

MistralMinistral 3 3BOn the open-weights frontier

Intelligence: 4.80
Total cost: $12.2

MistralMistral Small 3.1Off the frontier

Intelligence: 7.10
Total cost: $27.8

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Mistral Small 3.1 scores 2.3 points higher (7.1 vs 4.8) but costs 2.3× as much to run the benchmark ($27.8 vs $12.2; both budget class). Pick Mistral Small 3.1 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Ministral 3 3B.

Metric	Ministral 3 3B	Mistral Small 3.1	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	4.8	7.1	+47.9% Mistral Small 3.1 is 47.9% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$12.23	$27.82	+127.5% Mistral Small 3.1 is 2.3× more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	3.32s	11.31s	+240.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 240.7% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.10 / $0.10	$0.08 / $0.14
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Mistral Small 3.1 vs Ministral 3 3B: 47.9% more intelligence, 127.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 240.7% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Ministral 3 3B: what beats it Mistral Small 3.1: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Ministral 3 3B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Mistral Small 3.1 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

Ministral 3 3BMistral Small 3.1Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/ministral-3-3b/mistral-small-3-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/ministral-3-3b/mistral-small-3-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill