Model comparison
Devstral Small 2505 vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.7 to 33.9 on the Noometry Index. Devstral Small 2505 costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 35B-A3B'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. Devstral Small 2505 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 1 category; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Devstral Small 2505 leads 38.6 to 33.5.
- Devstral Small 2505 is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.30 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $2 for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
- Qwen3.5 35B-A3B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.9 | 41.7 |
| Released | 2025-05-07 | 2026-02-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.10 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.30 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 4 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Devstral Small 2505 leads
Devstral Small 2505: 38.6 (#160), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.5 (#244)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 28.8% | 29.3% |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | 56.4% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1410 |
Reasoning Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Devstral Small 2505: 19.1 (#243), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 23.9 (#158)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.6% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.7% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 10% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1400 |
| DTBench | — | 80% |
| LMCA | — | 29.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.52 |
Math Not comparable
Devstral Small 2505: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 38.4 (#86)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1404 |
Knowledge Not comparable
Devstral Small 2505: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.7 (#73)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 83.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.5% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1408 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Devstral Small 2505: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.2 (#122)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1379 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1458 |
| LMArena French | — | 1412 |
| LMArena German | — | 1367 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1354 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1377 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1390 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Devstral Small 2505: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 73.0 (#123)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1379 |
Long Context Not comparable
Devstral Small 2505: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#122)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1390 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Devstral Small 2505: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 58.1 (#118)
| Benchmark | Devstral Small 2505 | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1395 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1391 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Devstral Small 2505 better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 41.7 to 33.9 on the Noometry Index. Devstral Small 2505 costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 35B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Devstral Small 2505 or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?
Devstral Small 2505 is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.30 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 35B-A3B lists at $0.25 and $2.
Is Devstral Small 2505 or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?
Devstral Small 2505 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.6 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Devstral Small 2505 and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Devstral Small 2505 has 4 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.