# Llama 3.1 8B vs Mistral Small 3.1

> Side-by-side benchmark comparison for Llama 3.1 8B and Mistral Small 3.1 across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, multilingual, and math tasks.

- Canonical page: https://benchlm.ai/compare/llama-3-1-8b-vs-mistral-small-3-1
- Last updated: October 14, 2026

- Shared sourced benchmarks: 4
- HTML indexing: indexable
- Ranking lane: BenchAlign v5.8

## Quick Verdict

Pick Llama 3.1 8B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mistral Small 3.1 only makes more sense when its price, context window, or workload-specific category wins matter more than the overall score.

## Summary

- Llama 3.1 8B leads overall 51 to 46.
- The biggest single benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro in Knowledge, with scores of 48.3% and 66.8%.

## Model Snapshot

| Property | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|----------|----------|----------|
| Creator | Meta | Mistral |
| Type | Open Weight | Open Weight |
| Reasoning | Non-Reasoning | Non-Reasoning |
| Context | 128K | 128K |
| Overall Score | null | null |
| Benchmarks Covered | 7 | 7 |
| Pricing (input/output) | N/A | N/A |

## Category Breakdown

### Coding

- Winner: Not comparable
- Llama 3.1 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mistral Small 3.1 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| HumanEval | 72.6% | 88.4% | Mistral Small 3.1 |

### Multimodal & Grounded

- Winner: Not comparable
- Llama 3.1 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mistral Small 3.1 public-lane score: 18.8 (Unranked · 2 rankable rows)

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMMU | Coming soon | 64.0% | Coming soon |
| MMMU-Pro | Coming soon | 49.3% | Coming soon |

### Knowledge

- Winner: Not comparable
- Llama 3.1 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mistral Small 3.1 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MMLU | 73% | 80.6% | Mistral Small 3.1 |
| MMLU-Pro | 48.3% | 66.8% | Mistral Small 3.1 |
| GPQA | 30.4% | 46.0% | Mistral Small 3.1 |
| SimpleQA | Coming soon | 10.4% | Coming soon |

### Multilingual

- Winner: Not comparable
- Llama 3.1 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mistral Small 3.1 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| MGSM | 68.9% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Instruction Following

- Winner: Not comparable
- Llama 3.1 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mistral Small 3.1 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| IFEval | 80.4% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

### Mathematics

- Winner: Not comparable
- Llama 3.1 8B public-lane score: Coming soon
- Mistral Small 3.1 public-lane score: Coming soon

| Benchmark | Llama 3.1 8B | Mistral Small 3.1 | Winner |
|-----------|-----------|-----------|--------|
| GSM8K | 84.5% | Coming soon | Coming soon |

## FAQ

### Which is better overall, Llama 3.1 8B or Mistral Small 3.1?

Llama 3.1 8B is ahead overall on BenchLM right now.

### How many benchmarks does Llama 3.1 8B cover on BenchLM?

Llama 3.1 8B currently has 7 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

### How many benchmarks does Mistral Small 3.1 cover on BenchLM?

Mistral Small 3.1 currently has 7 sourced benchmark scores on BenchLM.

## Related Comparisons

- [Llama 3.1 8B vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-llama-3-1-8b)
- [Mistral Small 3.1 vs Claude Opus 5.5](/compare/claude-opus-5-5-vs-mistral-small-3-1)
- [Llama 3.1 8B vs GPT-6.1 Sol](/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-vs-llama-3-1-8b)
- [Mistral Small 3.1 vs GPT-6.1 Sol](/compare/gpt-6-1-sol-vs-mistral-small-3-1)

## Explore More

- [Llama 3.1 8B profile](/models/llama-3-1-8b)
- [Mistral Small 3.1 profile](/models/mistral-small-3-1)
- [Compare Pricing](/llm-pricing)
- [Alternative Finder](/tools/alternative-finder)
- [LLM Selector](/tools/llm-selector)
- [Overall Rankings](/best/overall)