ModelRefs / GPT-4.1 Mini vs Mistral Small 3.1
GPT-4.1 Mini vs Mistral Small 3.1
GPT-4.1 Mini vs Mistral Small 3.1: side-by-side benchmarks, pricing, context windows, coding ability and deployment. Pick the right model for your stack.
Overview
GPT-4.1 Mini: GPT-4.1 Mini is OpenAI's April 2025 smaller, faster GPT-4.1 variant, carrying the same 1,047,576-token context window, 32,768-token maximum output and June 2024 knowledge cutoff as the full model at roughly a fifth of its input price. It accepts text and image input and, like GPT-4.1, answers without a reasoning step. OpenAI has since deprecated it, scheduling the gpt-4.1-mini-2025-04-14 snapshot to shut down on 14 January 2027 with gpt-6-luna as the replacement.
Mistral Small 3.1: Mistral Small 3.1 is Mistral AI's 24-billion-parameter multimodal model, accepting text and image input across a context window of up to 128,000 tokens and published under Apache 2.0. Mistral reports inference speeds of 150 tokens per second and compares it with Gemma 3 and GPT-4o Mini in the same weight class. Its size and licence make it one of the larger models that remains practical to self-host on a single machine.
Context window: GPT-4.1 Mini accepts up to 1,000,000 tokens, Mistral Small 3.1 up to 128,000. Confirm the limit for your specific deployment channel before relying on it.
GPT-4.1 Mini vs Mistral Small 3.1 at a glance
| Attribute | GPT-4.1 Mini | Mistral Small 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | OpenAI | Mistral AI |
| Released | 2025-04-14 | 2025-03-17 |
| Context window | 1,000,000 tokens | 128,000 tokens |
| Input price | $0.4/M tokens | $0.1/M tokens |
| Output price | $1.6/M tokens | $0.3/M tokens |
| Licence | Proprietary | Apache-2.0 |
| Self-hostable | No, hosted only | Yes, open weights |
| Modalities | text, vision | text, vision |
Where they differ most
- Cost Efficiency: GPT-4.1 Mini 80%, Mistral Small 3.1 95%. Mistral Small 3.1 leads on this dimension.
- Reasoning: GPT-4.1 Mini 60%, Mistral Small 3.1 63%. Mistral Small 3.1 leads on this dimension.
Capability scores are ModelRefs' own derived signals, not vendor claims or benchmark results. Validate against your own workload before relying on them.
Continue your research
Use these connected ModelRefs sections to compare alternatives, inspect implementation paths, and review the evidence and governance boundaries relevant to GPT-4.1 Mini vs Mistral Small 3.1.
Frequently asked questions
Which is better, GPT-4.1 Mini or Mistral Small 3.1?
GPT-4.1 Mini and Mistral Small 3.1 target different workloads — see the benchmark and pricing tables for a side-by-side answer.
Is GPT-4.1 Mini cheaper than Mistral Small 3.1?
Compare $0.00040 vs $0.00010 on this page.