Ministral 3 8B vs Mistral Small 3.1

Which is better for the money: Ministral 3 8B by Mistral or Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.

Trade-off

MistralMinistral 3 8BOff the frontier

Intelligence: 5.50
Total cost: $27.5

MistralMistral Small 3.1Off the frontier

Intelligence: 7.10
Total cost: $27.8

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Mistral Small 3.1 scores 1.6 points higher (7.1 vs 5.5) but costs 1.0× as much to run the benchmark ($27.8 vs $27.5; both budget class). Pick Mistral Small 3.1 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Ministral 3 8B.

Metric	Ministral 3 8B	Mistral Small 3.1	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	5.5	7.1	+29.1% Mistral Small 3.1 is 29.1% more intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$27.47	$27.82	+1.3% Mistral Small 3.1 is 1.3% more expensive
End-to-end time (lower is better)	5.26s	10.74s	+104.2% Mistral Small 3.1 is 104.2% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.15 / $0.15	$0.08 / $0.14
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Mistral Small 3.1 vs Ministral 3 8B: 29.1% more intelligence, 1.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 104.2% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Ministral 3 8B: what beats it Mistral Small 3.1: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Ministral 3 8B 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 8BMistral 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-3-8b/mistral-small-3-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/ministral-3-8b/mistral-small-3-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill