Command R vs Mistral Small 3
How do these models stack up? Below is an expert side-by-side comparison of specifications, context window capacity, live pricing per million tokens, and standardized benchmark scores for Command R and Mistral Small 3.
Command R
Command R is Cohere's lightweight, cost-efficient model engineered for high-speed enterprise integrations, productivity automation, and retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) pipelines. Optimized for low-latency API tool use and structured JSON output, it is particularly effective in enterprise search and question-answering systems where fast, reliable responses are critical. With a 128,000-token context window and a price of $0.15/MTok for input, Command R provides strong RAG performance and multilingual support at a fraction of the cost of Command R+, making it the preferred choice for teams scaling intelligent document retrieval at high request volumes.
Mistral Small 3
Mistral Small 3 is a 24B-parameter language model optimized for low-latency performance across common AI tasks. Released under the Apache 2.0 license, it features both pre-trained and instruction-tuned versions designed...
Technical Specifications
| Specification | Command R | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Cohere | Mistral |
| Context Window | 128,000 tokens | 32,768 tokens |
| Agent Suitability | 78/100 | 84/100 |
| Time to First Token (TTFT) | 200 ms | 120 ms |
| Deployment Model | managed api | managed api |
| Production Stability | stable | stable |
| API Available | Yes | Yes |
| Released Date | 2024-03-11 | 2025-01-30 |
API Pricing Comparison
Input Price per Million Tokens
Command R
$0.15
Mistral Small 3
$0.07
Output Price per Million Tokens
Command R
$0.60
Mistral Small 3
$0.20
Want to test both models live?
Run side-by-side prompt prompts in our dynamic Sandbox. Check execution speeds, latency metrics, and compute actual costs in real-time.
Benchmark Performance Metrics
Scores show the raw performance percentages verified across key evaluation suites. Higher bars indicate superior accuracy and capability in that domain.
Command R Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Cost-effective RAG model — strong multilingual search performance
- ▸Limited agentic capability — use Command R+ for complex multi-step tool use
Mistral Small 3 Quirks & Gotchas
- ▸Fastest TTFT at lowest cost — ideal for high-volume classification
- ▸Not designed for complex reasoning — route multi-step tasks to Mistral Large 3