Compare / Llama 3.1 70B Instruct vs Mistral Small 3

Llama 3.1 70B Instruct vs Mistral Small 3

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 14 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Llama 3.1 70B Instruct
Meta · profile
Mistral Small 3
Mistral · profile
Results compared
14
Shared sources
3

Llama 3.1 70B Instruct or Mistral Small 3? The short answer

  • Mistral Small 3 is cheaper: $0.058 against $0.40 per million tokens, 7.0 times less.
  • They score about the same on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (6.6 and 6.7).
  • On our business benchmarks, Llama 3.1 70B Instruct ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

At a glance

Llama 3.1 70B InstructMistral Small 3
Price per million tokens$0.40 in · $0.40 out$0.050 in · $0.080 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.40$0.058
Cheapest host, blended$0.40 (DeepInfra, FP8)–
Intelligence Index6.66.7
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window131,072 tokens32,768 tokens
WeightsOpenOpen
Developer based inthe USFrance

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseLlama 3.1 70B InstructMistral Small 3
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 179 of 195 190 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 153 of 187 155 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers not measured 11 of 153

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricLlama 3.1 70B InstructMistral Small 3
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,2871,259
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,2571,227
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,2751,259
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,2731,255
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,2931,274
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,2641,248
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 6.606.70
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 40.9%46.2%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 4.5%3.8%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 34.4%26.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 15.2%19.6%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 15.0%8.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.380.35
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 32.833.9

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Llama 3.1 70B Instruct better than Mistral Small 3?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Llama 3.1 70B Instruct ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.

Which is cheaper, Llama 3.1 70B Instruct or Mistral Small 3?

Mistral Small 3 costs $0.058 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $0.40 for Llama 3.1 70B Instruct.

Run Llama 3.1 70B Instruct and Mistral Small 3 on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.