GPT-4o vs Mistral Small 3
Mistral Small 3 costs 125.0x less per output token than GPT-4o ($0.08 vs $10.00 per million). Updated October 21, 2026; 9 benchmarks have a result for both.
GPT-4o or Mistral Small 3: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick GPT-4o for a larger context window (128K against 33K tokens) and work measured by Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run), where it leads.
- Shared results
- 9
- GPT-4o only
- 18
- Mistral Small 3 only
- 27
- Like-for-like categories
- 6 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Neither has a coding score yet.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Mistral Small 3 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 6.7.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only GPT-4o has a Design Arena: websites result, 831.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
GPT-4o
GPT-4o takes 128K tokens against 33K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mistral Small 3
GPT-4o $0.0075, Mistral Small 3 $0.0001 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- GPT-4o not benchmarked, Mistral Small 3 not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- General, 28.6 points apart on average over 2 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Long context reasoning (AA-LCR): GPT-4o 49.3% against Mistral Small 3 0.0%, 49.3 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- GPT-4o $10.00 against Mistral Small 3 $0.08 per million output tokens, 125.0x apart.
- Context window
- GPT-4o takes 128K tokens, Mistral Small 3 33K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | GPT-4o | Bars | Mistral Small 3 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 1 | 0 | ||
| Agentic work | 1 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 1 | 1 | ||
| Math | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 0 | ||
| General | 2 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 8 | 1 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index10
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | 38.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| SWE-bench Lite | 38.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| SWE-bench (full test set) | 18.8% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| SWE-bench Multimodal | 30.4% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 30.9% | 25.2% | GPT-4o |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 8.3% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1246 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1248 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| SciCode | 1.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 30 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1 board, none shared
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 6.7 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
Agentic workLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 25.1% | 19.6% | GPT-4o |
| GDPval | 9.9% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 39 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index11
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 54.3% | 46.2% | GPT-4o |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 2.4% | 3.8% | Mistral Small 3 |
| ARC-AGI | 4.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0.0% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1233 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1202 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1243 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 15 boards here | |||
MathLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Math Index | 6.0 | 4.3 | GPT-4o |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 6.0% | 4.3% | GPT-4o |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1240 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1243 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 74.8% | 65.2% | GPT-4o |
| MMLU | 88.1% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1235 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1215 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1219 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1205 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 831 | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 885 | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 906 | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 858 | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 869 | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 861 | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| IFBench | 34.3% | 26.4% | GPT-4o |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 49.3% | 0.0% | GPT-4o |
| DTBench | 64.5% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| LMCA | 16.6% | Not measured | Only GPT-4o measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1234 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1214 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1194 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1256 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1198 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1204 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1211 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1111 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1188 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1204 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1216 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1217 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1246 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1214 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1184 | Only Mistral Small 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 27 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mistral Small 3 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Mistral Small 3 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Mistral Small 3 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | OpenAI GPT-4o | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | OpenAI | Mistral AI |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | May 13, 2024 | January 30, 2025 |
| Context window | 128K | 33K |
| Input $/Mtok | $2.50 | $0.05 |
| Output $/Mtok | $10.00 | $0.08 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is GPT-4o better than Mistral Small 3 for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick GPT-4o for a larger context window (128K against 33K tokens) and work measured by Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run), where it leads.
Which is cheaper, GPT-4o or Mistral Small 3?
GPT-4o costs $2.50 per million input tokens and $10.00 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3 costs $0.05 and $0.08. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, GPT-4o or Mistral Small 3?
GPT-4o, with 128K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks is the GPT-4o vs Mistral Small 3 comparison based on?
9 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. GPT-4o's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Mistral Small 3's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.