OpenAI vs Mistral

GPT-5 mini vs Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)

Compare GPT-5 mini and Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) across pricing, context window, capabilities, benchmarks, and API access to choose the better fit for reasoning-heavy tasks versus cost-efficient scale.

GPT-5 mini
Aug 07, 2025 400,000 context 128,000 tokens output

Overview Comparison

Structured side-by-side differences for the highest-signal model metadata.

GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)

Provider

The entity that currently provides this model.

GPT-5 mini OpenAI
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Mistral

Model ID

The routed model identifier exposed by upstream providers.

GPT-5 mini openai/gpt-5-mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) N/A

Input Context Window

The number of tokens supported by the input context window.

GPT-5 mini 400,000 tokens
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 128,000 tokens

Maximum Output Tokens

The number of tokens that can be generated by the model in a single request.

GPT-5 mini 128,000 tokens tokens
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 16,000 tokens tokens

Open Source

Whether the model's code is available for public use.

GPT-5 mini No
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) No

Release Date

When the model was first released.

GPT-5 mini Aug 07, 2025
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Unknown

Knowledge Cut-off Date

When the model's knowledge was last updated.

GPT-5 mini 2024-05-31
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Unknown

API Providers

The providers that currently expose the model through an API.

GPT-5 mini
OpenRouter
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Mistral API, Hugging Face

Modalities

Types of data each model can process or return.

GPT-5 mini
Text Image File
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Text Code

Pricing Comparison

Compare current token pricing before you choose the cheaper or more scalable API option.

GPT-5 mini OpenAI
Input price $0.25 Per 1M tokens
Output price $2.00 Per 1M tokens
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Mistral
Input price $0.10 Per 1M tokens
Output price N/A Per 1M tokens

Capabilities Comparison

See where each model overlaps, where they differ, and which one supports more of the features you care about.

Capability
GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Code Generation Handles code tasks across 80+ programming languages, including generation, completion, and explanation.
GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
Fast Inference Optimized for lower latency compared to full GPT-5, making it suitable for applications where response speed is a priority.
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
File
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Function Calling Supports structured tool use and function calling, enabling integration with external APIs and agentic workflows.
GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
Image
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Large Context Window Processes up to 400,000 tokens in a single context, enabling long documents, extended conversations, or large codebases to be handled in one request.
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Long Context Window Processes up to 128,000 tokens in a single request, enabling analysis of long documents, codebases, or extended conversations without truncation.
GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
MCP Server Support Accepts MCP (Model Context Protocol) server configurations as inputs, enabling standardized integration with external context and data sources.
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Multilingual Text Supports dozens of spoken languages for generation and comprehension tasks, making it suitable for international and localized applications.
GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
Multimodal Understanding Accepts image inputs alongside text, allowing the model to reason about visual content within a single prompt.
GPT-5 mini
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
Reasoning
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Structured Output
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Text
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) Supported
Text Generation Generates natural language text across a wide range of formats including summaries, instructions, and structured responses.
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Tool Use Supports function calling and tool integrations, allowing the model to invoke external tools or APIs as part of a response.
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
Tools
GPT-5 mini Supported
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)

Benchmark Comparison

Shared benchmark rows make it easier to compare performance where both models have published scores.

Benchmark GPT-5 mini Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)
AIME 2024
American math olympiad problems
GPT-5 mini N/A
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 6.3%
GPQA Diamond
PhD-level science questions (biology, physics, chemistry)
GPT-5 mini 82.8%
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 38.1%
HLE
Questions that challenge frontier models across many domains
GPT-5 mini 19.7%
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 4.3%
LiveCodeBench
Real-world coding tasks from recent competitions
GPT-5 mini 83.8%
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 14.1%
MATH-500
Undergraduate and competition-level math problems
GPT-5 mini N/A
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 56.3%
MMLU-Pro
Expert knowledge across 14 academic disciplines
GPT-5 mini 83.7%
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 52.9%
SciCode
Scientific research coding and numerical methods
GPT-5 mini 39.2%
Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) 15.6%
Community discussion

What Reddit discussions say about GPT-5 mini vs Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)

GPT-5 mini and Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) are both surfacing live Reddit discussions, giving this comparison a community layer beyond specs and benchmarks.

The most visible threads right now are clustered in r/GithubCopilot, r/ChatGPT, r/OpenAI.

GPT-5 mini r/OpenAI 219 upvotes 68 comments August 11, 2025
GPT-5 Benchmarks: How GPT-5, Mini, and Nano Perform in Real Tasks

Hi everyone,

We ran task benchmarks on the GPT-5 series models, and as per general consensus, they are likely not a break through in intelligence. But they are a good replacement of o3, o1 and gpt-4.1. And lower latency and the cost improvements are impressive! Likely really good models for chatgpt, even though users have to get used to them.

**For builders, perhaps one way to look at it:**

o3 and gpt-4.1 -> gpt-5

o1 -> gpt-5-mini

o1-mini -> gpt-5-nano

**But let's look at a tricky failure case to be aware of.**

Part of our context oriented task evals, we task the model to read a travel journal and count the number of visited cities:

Question: "How many cities does the author mention"

Expected: 19

GPT-5: 12

Models that consistently gets this right is gemini-2.5-flash, gemini-2.5-pro, claude-sonnet-4, claude-opus-4, claude-sonnet-3.7, claude-3.5-sonnet, gpt-oss-120b, grok-4.

To be a good model for building with, context attention is one of the primary criterias. What makes Anthropic models stand out is how well they have been utilising the context window even since sonnet-3.5. Gemini series and Grok seems to be putting attention to this as well.

You can read more about our task categories and eval methods here: [https://opper.ai/models](https://opper.ai/models)

For those building with it, anyone else seeing similar strengths/weaknesses?

Open Reddit thread
GPT-5 mini r/LocalLLaMA 152 upvotes 40 comments March 15, 2026
Qwen3.5-27B performs almost on par with 397B and GPT-5 mini in the Game Agent Coding League

Hi LocalLlama.

Here are the results from the March run of the GACL. A few observations from my side:

* **GPT-5.4** clearly leads among the major models at the moment.
* **Qwen3.5-27B** performed better than every other Qwen model except **397B**, trailing it by only **0.04 points**. In my opinion, it’s an outstanding model.
* **Kimi2.5** is currently the top **open-weight** model, ranking **#6 globally**, while **GLM-5** comes next at **#7 globally**.
* Significant difference between Opus and Sonnet, more than I expected.
* **GPT models dominate the Battleship game.** However, **Tic-Tac-Toe** didn’t work well as a benchmark since nearly all models performed similarly. I’m planning to replace it with another game next month. Suggestions are welcome.

For context, **GACL** is a league where models generate **agent code** to play **seven different games**. Each model produces **two agents**, and each agent competes against every other agent except its paired “friendly” agent from the same model. In other words, the models themselves don’t play the games but they generate the agents that do. Only the top-performing agent from each model is considered when creating the leaderboards.

All **game logs, scoreboards, and generated agent codes** are available on the league page.

[Github Link](https://github.com/summersonnn/Game-Agent-Coding-Benchmark)

[League Link](https://gameagentcodingleague.com/leaderboard.html)

Open Reddit thread
View more discussions →

Which model should you choose?

Use the summary below to decide which model better fits your workflow, budget, and feature requirements.

Best fit for

GPT-5 mini

GPT-5 mini is a stronger fit for reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications.

Best fit for

Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)

Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) is a stronger fit for cost-efficient scale, benchmark-led evaluation.

Verdict

Choose GPT-5 mini if you prioritize reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications. Choose Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) if your workflow depends more on cost-efficient scale, benchmark-led evaluation.

FAQ

Common questions about GPT-5 mini vs Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)

What is the main difference between GPT-5 mini and Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)?

GPT-5 mini leans toward reasoning-heavy tasks, tool-augmented workflows, multimodal applications, while Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) is better suited to cost-efficient scale, benchmark-led evaluation.

Which model is cheaper: GPT-5 mini or Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)?

Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) starts lower on input pricing at $0.1000 per 1M input tokens, compared with $0.2500 for GPT-5 mini.

Which model has the larger context window: GPT-5 mini or Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03)?

GPT-5 mini is listed with a context window of 400,000, while Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) is listed with 128,000.

How should I evaluate GPT-5 mini vs Mistral Small 3.1 (25.03) for my use case?

This comparison currently includes 7 shared benchmark rows, helping you compare practical performance across overlapping evaluations.