Model comparison
Codestral vs Qwen3 Max
Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 5.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 Max in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3 Max leads 42.4 to 26.9.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 32.5% for Codestral and 72.5% for Qwen3 Max.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
- Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.
- Codestral has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Codestral | Qwen3 Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.1 | 43.5 |
| Released | 2024-05-29 | 2025-09-23 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 256K | 262K |
| Max output | 4K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $1.20 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.90 | $6 |
| Results tracked | 7 | 33 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3 Max leads
Codestral: 26.9 (#316), Qwen3 Max: 42.4 (#93)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 370.45 |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1456 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: —
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 71.56 |
Reasoning Qwen3 Max leads
Codestral: 19.1 (#244), Qwen3 Max: 22.0 (#186)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | 72.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 30.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 4% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1448 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.1% |
| LMCA | — | 28.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.41 |
Math Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: 37.6 (#94)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 73.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1447 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.1% |
Knowledge Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#72)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 72.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 48.7% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1457 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: 53.9 (#58)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1429 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1479 |
| LMArena French | — | 1450 |
| LMArena German | — | 1463 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1399 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1397 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1428 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1463 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: 75.0 (#81)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1420 |
Long Context Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#129)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | — | 14.5% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1439 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Codestral: —, Qwen3 Max: 62.6 (#72)
| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1439 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1401 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1446 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Codestral better than Qwen3 Max?
Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 30.1 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 5.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Codestral or Qwen3 Max?
Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.
Is Codestral or Qwen3 Max better for coding?
Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.4 versus 26.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks do Codestral and Qwen3 Max share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.