GPT-4.1 vs Mistral Small 3

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

GPT-4.1

OpenAI

Updated GPT-4 generation with improved instruction following and reduced hallucination. Better coding accuracy than GPT-4o.

Input$2.00/M
Output$8.00/M
Context128K tokens
Best ForProduction coding, API development, complex instructions
Benchmark80/100

Mistral Small 3

Mistral

Mistral's efficient small model. Great performance for its size at very competitive pricing.

Input$0.100/M
Output$0.300/M
Context32K tokens
Best ForChat, summarization, general text tasks

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioGPT-4.1Mistral Small 3Savings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.31 $0.01 Mistral Small 3 saves $0.30 (96%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $2.30 $0.10 Mistral Small 3 saves $2.20 (96%)
Large Project (50K lines) $11.50 $0.47 Mistral Small 3 saves $11.03 (96%)
Code Review (5K lines) $0.55 $0.02 Mistral Small 3 saves $0.53 (95%)

Verdict

Mistral Small 3 wins on both price and performance — $0.100/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models