The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct are closely matched at -3.0 and 4.2 on the LLM Stats Score.

DeepSeek · Mistral AI · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct are closely matched on the overall LLM Stats Score at -3.0 and 4.2.

In the 1 individual benchmarks reported for both models, Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct wins 1; this is a narrower head-to-head signal than the composite indexes.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

  • you are already invested in the DeepSeek ecosystem

Choose Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

  • you value its reported benchmark strengths — it wins 1 of 1 exact shared results
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Mar 2025

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
DeepSeek
Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct
Mistral AI
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
-3.0
#341
4.2
#301
Reasoning
-2.6
#331
4.2
#295
Coding
-4.6
#258
9.7
#169
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
0 of 1
1 of 1
Input price
— / M
— / M
Output price
— / M
— / M
Context window
—
—

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct
Math
5.4#271
7.9#261
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

4 reported for DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B · 9 for Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

1 shared

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B outperforms in 0 benchmarks, while Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct is better at 1 benchmark (GPQA).

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct significantly outperforms across most benchmarks.

Mon Sep 14 2026 • llm-stats.com

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

22.2B diff

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct has 22.2B more parameters than DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B, making it 1248.3% larger.

DeepSeek
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
1.8Bparameters
Mistral AI
Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct
24.0Bparameters
1.8B
DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
24.0B
Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct supports multimodal inputs, whereas DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B does not.

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is licensed under MIT, while Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct uses Apache 2.0.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

MIT

Open weights

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

Apache 2.0

Open weights

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B was released on 2025-01-20, while Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct was released on 2025-03-17.

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct is 2 months newer than DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B

Jan 20, 2025

1.6 years ago

Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct

Mar 17, 2025

1.5 years ago

1mo newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B
✓ Preferred
Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B vs Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct.

Which is better, DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B or Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct are closely matched on the LLM Stats Score at -3.0 and 4.2. DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is made by DeepSeek and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct is made by Mistral AI. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B compare to Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct in benchmarks?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B scores MATH-500: 83.9%, AIME 2024: 52.7%, GPQA: 33.8%, LiveCodeBench: 16.9%. Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct scores HumanEval: 88.4%, MMLU: 80.6%, TriviaQA: 80.5%, MBPP: 74.7%, MATH: 69.3%.

What are the main differences between DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (-3.0 vs 4.2), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (MIT vs Apache 2.0). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct?

DeepSeek R1 Distill Qwen 1.5B is developed by DeepSeek and Mistral Small 3.1 24B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI.

Related comparisons