Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: Ministral 3 14B 2512 scored 33.8% and Mistral Small 4 32.5% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
- Ministral 3 14B 2512 is 6.0× cheaper per question as billed ($0.00031 vs $0.0019), reasoning tokens included.
- Mistral Small 4 generates text 5.3× faster: 170 tokens per second against 32.
- Mistral Small 4 starts answering sooner: 0.5 s to the first token, against 0.6 s for Ministral 3 14B 2512.
Which should you choose?
Choose Ministral 3 14B 2512 for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.00092 against $0.0057) and shorter outputs (about 1,255 tokens per question against 3,021). Choose Mistral Small 4 for faster streaming and a quicker first token. The widest subject gap is in economics: Mistral Small 4 answered 6 of 9 correctly, Ministral 3 14B 2512 4 of 9. With so few questions per subject, treat this as a lead to test on your own prompts, not a result.
Accuracy gap +1.3 points (z = 0.17). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.