Model comparison
Magistral Medium vs Qwen3.5-9B
Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.2 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium'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. Magistral Medium scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 23.1 to 8.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 39.2% for Magistral Medium and 27.5% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
Side by side
| Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 35.2 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2025-03-17 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 16K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $5 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Medium leads
Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 39.2% | 27.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Medium: —, Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
Reasoning Qwen3.5-9B leads
Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | — |
| DTBench | — | 71.2% |
| LMCA | — | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.46 |
Math Too close to call
Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 61.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1250 | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads
Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 79% |
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1232 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1227 | — |
| LMArena French | 1267 | — |
| LMArena German | 1248 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1175 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1125 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1224 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1271 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 66.0 (#211), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Medium better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 35.2 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium or Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.
Is Magistral Medium or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
Magistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.1 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Qwen3.5-9B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.