Compare / Mistral Small 4 vs GPT-6 Luna

Mistral Small 4 vs GPT-6 Luna

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 12 results on 2 sources that measured both models.

Results as of 8 October 2026 (catalogue release 2026-10-08-4199ce0620fe).

Mistral Small 4
Mistral AI · profile
GPT-6 Luna
OpenAI · profile
Results compared
12
Shared sources
2

Mistral Small 4 or GPT-6 Luna? The short answer

Pick GPT-6 Luna: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 38.1 against 11.3) and costs less.

  • GPT-6 Luna is cheaper to run: $0.002 against $0.004 per game of bullet chess on BulletBench (2.4 times less).
  • GPT-6 Luna scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 38.1 against 11.3.
  • GPT-6 Luna is newer: released 22 Sep 2026, against 16 Mar 2026 for Mistral Small 4.
  • On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: GPT-6 Luna does better for agents and tool use and reasoning and knowledge.

At a glance

Mistral Small 4GPT-6 Luna
Price per million tokens$0.15 in · $0.60 out$0.10 in · $0.50 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$0.26$0.20
Cheapest host, blended$0.26 (Mistral)$0.20 (Azure)
Cost per game of bullet chess (BulletBench)$0.004$0.002
Cached input, per million$0.015 cached input$0.010 cached input
Intelligence Index11.338.1
Spring Prompt overall–40
Output speed, tokens a second164127
Context window262,144 tokens1,050,000 tokens
Released16 Mar 202622 Sep 2026 (newer)
WeightsOpenClosed
Developer based inFrancethe US

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 caseMistral Small 4GPT-6 Luna
Product listingsTurning a sparse product feed and photos into listings that can go live not measured 5 of 20
Decks from an analysisTurning a finished analysis into a deck you could present as it is not measured 7 of 19
Marketing planningPlanning a year of ad spend without overspending not measured 3 of 19
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 132 of 164 43 of 164
Professional workReal tasks from banking, consulting and law, business documents and freelance projects not measured 25 of 51
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 131 of 198 40 of 198
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 116 of 188 60 of 188
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers not measured 94 of 152
Speed under pressureGood decisions against a real clock (fast chess) 9 of 22 17 of 22

From our research

Every shared result

Each model's best result on every measure both have, grouped by benchmark, with the setting that produced it. The headline measures of each benchmark come first; the rest are under "Show all". Green marks the better value; where a source reports ranges that overlap, neither is marked.

MeasureMistral Small 4GPT-6 Luna
BulletBench measured by Spring Prompt · 3 results
Cost per game · Bullet 60sUS dollars, lower is better $0.0039no reasoning $0.0016no reasoning
Ladder Elo · Bullet 60sladder Elo, higher is better 367no reasoning 249no reasoning
Games lost on time · Bullet 60s% of games, lower is better 25.0%no reasoning 50.0%no reasoning
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better 11.3 38.1max reasoning
Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better 9.9% 38.5%max reasoning
Terminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks, higher is better 0.0% 12.6%max reasoning
Show all 12 results (6 more)
MeasureMistral Small 4GPT-6 Luna
BulletBench measured by Spring Prompt · 2 results
Invalid moves · Bullet 60s% of moves, lower is better 0.6%no reasoning 0.0%no reasoning
Median move time · Bullet 60smilliseconds, lower is better 0.6 sno reasoning 1.5 sno reasoning
Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 4 results
Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better 49.7% 83.3%max reasoning
Output speedtokens per second, higher is better 164 127max reasoning
SciCode% of problems, higher is better 38.8% 54.6%max reasoning
Time to first answer tokenseconds, lower is better 0.47no reasoning 0.82no reasoning

Quick answers

Is Mistral Small 4 better than GPT-6 Luna?

Pick GPT-6 Luna: it scores higher (Intelligence Index 38.1 against 11.3) and costs less.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 4 or GPT-6 Luna?

GPT-6 Luna is cheaper to run: $0.002 against $0.004 per game of bullet chess on BulletBench (2.4 times less).

Which is faster, Mistral Small 4 or GPT-6 Luna?

Mistral Small 4 writes about 164 tokens a second on its usual API, against 127 for GPT-6 Luna (Artificial Analysis).

Run Mistral Small 4 and GPT-6 Luna on your own prompt

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