Model comparison
Codestral vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 1 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 40.8 to 27.3.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
Side by side
| Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 47.5 |
| Released | 2024-05-29 | 2026-03-31 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |
| Context window | 256K | 1M |
| Max output | 8K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | $3 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 37 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Codestral: 27.3 (#321), Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.8 (#130)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 670.15 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1461 |
| SciCode | — | 40.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1467 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: —
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Codestral: 19.8 (#251), Qwen3.6 Plus: 29.3 (#93)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| CritPt | — | 2.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1449 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| DTBench | — | 81.9% |
| LMCA | — | 33.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.65 |
Math Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 51.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 93.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1450 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#45)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 88.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1454 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.3 (#70)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1477 |
| LMArena French | — | 1455 |
| LMArena German | — | 1452 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1379 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1432 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.0 (#74)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1425 |
Long Context Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.2 (#49)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1439 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.2 (#82)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1404 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1438 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Codestral better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Codestral or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.
Is Codestral or Qwen3.6 Plus better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks do Codestral and Qwen3.6 Plus share?
1 benchmark has published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.