Head-to-head comparison
Phi 3 medium 4k instruct (Microsoft) and Phi 3 small 8k instruct (Microsoft) compared on the ModelCap Index, API price, context window, provider availability, weight access and every public benchmark board they share. Figures are the same ones shown on the live rankings; nothing here is a hidden score.
Snapshot as of 23 September 2026
As of 23 September 2026, Phi 3 medium 4k instruct holds the stronger ModelCap Index position (#240 vs #254).
Evidence: 2 public benchmark observations across 2 boards · 2 public benchmark observations across 2 boards. Prices are the lowest listed API offer per million tokens observed on the OpenRouter catalogue.
Scores are the sources' own published figures for each model's best evaluated configuration; ModelCap never re-runs a benchmark.
Want a different pairing? Open the interactive comparison tool to swap either model for any current ranked language model.
Phi 3 medium 4k instruct ranks higher on the ModelCap Index as of 23 September 2026: #240 against #254. That is a capability ranking built from public benchmark evidence with published uncertainty; whether it is "better" for you also depends on price, context and where you can run it. Their published uncertainty intervals overlap, so the rank difference alone does not establish a reliable capability advantage for your workload.
At least one of the two has no listed API price on ModelCap right now, so no price comparison is made.
Both publish a —-token context window.
Arena coding: Phi 3 medium 4k instruct 1231, Phi 3 small 8k instruct 1205 — Phi 3 medium 4k instruct leads.
Phi 3 medium 4k instruct: Open weights. Phi 3 small 8k instruct: Open weights. Open weights mean the checkpoint can be downloaded and self-hosted under its licence; API-only models are available solely through hosted endpoints.
ModelCap currently lists 0 API providers for Phi 3 medium 4k instruct and 0 for Phi 3 small 8k instruct, from the OpenRouter catalogue snapshot the site serves; each model page lists the providers and their prices.
Every figure comes from the sealed ModelCap dataset published 23 September 2026; the page re-renders within a minute of each data refresh, and the ModelCap Index positions are the same ones shown on the live rankings.