Mistral Small vs o3-pro
Comparing Mistral Small and o3-pro across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Mistral AI · OpenAI · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Mistral Small and o3-pro trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
On price, Mistral Small is roughly 116.7x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.
o3-pro also accepts a larger context window (200,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.
Based on current benchmark, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Mistral Small
- cost matters — it's about 116.7x cheaper per token
- you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune
Choose o3-pro
- you process long inputs — it offers a 200,000 token context window
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Jun 2025
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
Mistral Small and o3-prodon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Arena Performance
Playground indexes and blind preference scores
Pricing Analysis
Price comparison per million tokens
For input processing, Mistral Small ($0.20/1M tokens) is 100.0x cheaper than o3-pro ($20.00/1M tokens).
For output processing, Mistral Small ($0.60/1M tokens) is 133.3x cheaper than o3-pro ($80.00/1M tokens).
In conclusion, o3-pro is more expensive than Mistral Small.*
* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
o3-pro accepts 200,000 input tokens compared to Mistral Small's 32,768 tokens. o3-pro can generate longer responses up to 100,000 tokens, while Mistral Small is limited to 32,768 tokens.
Input Capabilities
Supported data types and modalities
o3-pro supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small does not.
o3-pro can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Mistral Small
o3-pro
License
Usage and distribution terms
Mistral Small is licensed under Mistral Research License, while o3-pro uses a proprietary license.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Mistral Research License
Open weights
Proprietary
Closed source
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Mistral Small was released on 2024-09-17, while o3-pro was released on 2025-06-10.
o3-pro is 9 months newer than Mistral Small.
Sep 17, 2024
1.9 years ago
Jun 10, 2025
1.2 years ago
8mo newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
o3-pro has a documented knowledge cutoff of 2024-05-31, while Mistral Small's cutoff date is not specified.
We can confirm o3-pro's training data extends to 2024-05-31, but cannot make a direct comparison without Mistral Small's cutoff date.
—
May 2024
Provider Availability
Mistral Small is available from Mistral AI. o3-pro is available from OpenAI.
Mistral Small
o3-pro
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Mistral Small and o3-pro side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Mistral Small vs o3-pro.