Side-by-side comparison of Codestral 22B (Mistral AI · France) and SmolLM3 3B (Hugging Face · USA) for self-hosted deployment of the open-weight model. Codestral 22B is rated conditional; SmolLM3 3B is EU-ready. They part ways on licence: Codestral 22B is "MNPL (non-prod)", SmolLM3 3B is "Apache 2.0".
| Field | ||
|---|---|---|
| Summary | ||
| Verdict | Conditional EU code model trained on 80+ languages. Licensed under Mistral Non-Production License — blocked for any production or commercial deployment without a paid commercial licence. Use Codestral Mamba (Apache 2.0) if you need commercial freedom. | EU-ready Fully open small model: Apache 2.0 weights, training data published, engineering blueprint public. 6 native languages (EN/FR/ES/DE/IT/PT) covers major EU markets. 128K context via YARN. Strong default for edge or on-prem EU deployments where transparency matters. |
| Last reviewed | 2026-04-15 | 2026-04-16 |
| Open-weight | ||
| Licence | MNPL (non-prod) | Apache 2.0 |
| Commercial use | Paid licence req. | Yes |
| Training data | Partial | Disclosed |
| Origin | EU | USA |
| Performance & pricing? | ||
| Quality index | — | — |
| Speed | — | — |
| Blended price | — | — |
| Context window | — | — |
| Evidence | ||
| Sources | ||
No overlapping sources between the two entries.