Grok Code Fast 1 vs Mistral Small 3.1 24B

Summary of our 12-test suite (per-model scores from the payload):

• Grok Code Fast 1 wins (in our testing): creative problem solving 3 vs 2; tool calling 4 vs 1; classification 4 vs 3; safety calibration 2 vs 1; persona consistency 4 vs 2; agentic planning 5 vs 3. Those wins mean Grok is stronger at function selection, argument accuracy and sequencing (tool calling), goal decomposition and failure recovery (agentic planning) and preserves persona and safe refusals better in our tests. Grok's tool calling rank is "rank 18 of 54 (29 models share this score)" and it is tied for 1st in classification and tied for 1st in agentic planning (see payload displays).
• Mistral Small 3.1 24B wins (in our testing): long context 5 vs 4. This is the key Mistral advantage: retrieval and accuracy at 30K+ tokens. Mistral's long context ranking is "tied for 1st with 36 other models out of 55 tested" in our data.
• Ties (in our testing): structured output 4 vs 4; strategic analysis 3 vs 3; constrained rewriting 3 vs 3; faithfulness 4 vs 4; multilingual 4 vs 4 — each model delivers equivalent performance on format adherence, nuanced tradeoff reasoning, constrained compression, faithfulness to sources, and non-English output in our suite. Practical interpretation: choose Grok when you need accurate tool selection, stepwise agentic planning, and stronger classification/persona consistency. Choose Mistral when working with very long contexts or multimodal inputs (payload modality: text+image->text for Mistral vs text->text for Grok). Note quirks from the payload: Grok "uses_reasoning_tokens" (reasoning traces visible) and Mistral has "no_tool calling," which explains much of the tool calling gap.

Pricing in the payload (per mTok) is: Grok Code Fast 1 input $0.20 / output $1.50; Mistral Small 3.1 24B input $0.35 / output $0.56. Per 1,000 mTok = per 1M tokens: Grok input $200 / output $1,500; Mistral input $350 / output $560. Example totals under a 50/50 input/output split: 1M tokens — Grok $850 vs Mistral $455; 10M tokens — Grok $8,500 vs Mistral $4,550; 100M tokens — Grok $85,000 vs Mistral $45,500. The priceRatio in the payload is 2.6786, meaning Grok runs ~2.68× more expensive on output-weighted workloads. Teams with heavy volume (10M+/month) or tight budgets should prefer Mistral for cost-efficiency; teams that need robust tool calling, visible reasoning traces, and agentic coding should budget for Grok.

Choose Grok Code Fast 1 if you: need reliable tool calling, visible reasoning traces for steerable agentic coding, top-tier agentic planning and classification in our tests, and you can absorb higher runtime costs (Grok output $1.50/mTok). Choose Mistral Small 3.1 24B if you: process long contexts (30K+ tokens) or multimodal inputs (text+image->text), need the lower-cost runtime (Mistral output $0.56/mTok), and can accept weaker tool calling and agentic behavior.