Model comparison
Magistral Medium vs Qwen3.6 35B-A3B
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads 28.0 to 8.6.
- Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $1.49 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
Side by side
| Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 35.2 | 37.6 |
| Released | 2025-03-17 | 2026-04-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 16K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $2 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $5 | $1.49 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 14 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Medium leads
Magistral Medium: 39.1 (#161), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 37.2 (#196)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 39.2% | 35.8% |
| WeirdML | — | 34.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Medium: —, Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 22.1 (#134)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 23% |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
Magistral Medium: 8.6 (#348), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 28.0 (#109)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 41.6% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 26% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 22% |
| DTBench | — | 73.9% |
| LMCA | — | 29.7% |
| Surface Evolver Bench | — | 44.4% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 143.93 |
Math Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
Magistral Medium: 35.1 (#189), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 38.9 (#121)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 20.4% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 86.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1250 | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 35B-A3B leads
Magistral Medium: 33.5 (#202), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: 51.3 (#68)
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 84.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1223 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 39.6 (#224), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| 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), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#183), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Medium: 46.3 (#219), Qwen3.6 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.6 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Medium better than Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.6 to 35.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.6 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $1.49 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.
Is Magistral Medium or Qwen3.6 35B-A3B better for coding?
Magistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.1 versus 37.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 35B-A3B has 14.