Mistral Small 3.2 vs Trinity Large Thinking
Which is better for the money: Mistral Small 3.2 by Mistral or Trinity Large Thinking by Arcee AI? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-09-09.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Trinity Large Thinking scores 3.9 points higher (10.9 vs 7.0) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($518 vs $163; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Trinity Large Thinking when you need intelligence above 7.0, and Mistral Small 3.2 when 7.0 is enough.
| Metric | Mistral Small 3.2 | Trinity Large Thinking | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 7.0 | 10.9 | +55.7% Trinity Large Thinking is 55.7% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $162.68 | $518.07 | +218.5% Trinity Large Thinking is 3.2× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 3.90s | 8.78s | +125.1% Trinity Large Thinking is 125.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.30 | $0.25 / $0.90 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Trinity Large Thinking vs Mistral Small 3.2: 55.7% more intelligence, 218.5% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 125.1% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mistral Small 3.2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.5-Pro scores 26.40 for $138.
- Trinity Large Thinking is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GLM-5.3-Flash scores 41.90 for $280.
Mistral Small 3.2Trinity Large ThinkingToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-2/trinity-large-thinking · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-2/trinity-large-thinking?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill