Mistral Large 3 vs Mistral Small 3.1

Which is better for the money: Mistral Large 3 by Mistral or Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

MistralMistral Large 3Off the frontier

Intelligence: 9.30
Total cost: $46.4

MistralMistral Small 3.1Off the frontier

Intelligence: 7.10
Total cost: $27.8

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Mistral Large 3 scores 2.2 points higher (9.3 vs 7.1) but costs 1.7× as much to run the benchmark ($46.4 vs $27.8; both budget class). Pick Mistral Large 3 when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mistral Small 3.1.

Metric	Mistral Large 3	Mistral Small 3.1	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	9.3	7.1	−23.7% Mistral Small 3.1 is 23.7% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$46.41	$27.82	−40.1% Mistral Small 3.1 is 40.1% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	7.17s	11.78s	+64.3% Mistral Small 3.1 is 64.3% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$0.50 / $1.50	$0.08 / $0.14
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Mistral Small 3.1 vs Mistral Large 3: 23.7% less intelligence, 40.1% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 64.3% slower end-to-end.

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

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Mistral Large 3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Mistral Small 3.1 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.

Mistral Large 3Mistral 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/mistral-large-3/mistral-small-3-1 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-large-3/mistral-small-3-1?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill