Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen Max
Qwen Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.7 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen 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. Magistral Small scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen Max in 1 category; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen Max leads 25.1 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 30% for Magistral Small and 16.1% for Qwen Max.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
- Magistral Small accepts more context: 128K tokens versus 33K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 34.7 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2024-04-03 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 33K |
| Max output | 40K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $1.60 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $6.40 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 23 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| Aider Polyglot | — | 21.8% |
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1288 |
Reasoning Qwen Max leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1269 |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
Math Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 16.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1275 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 67.2% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 56.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1248 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1263 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1254 |
| LMArena French | — | 1330 |
| LMArena German | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1205 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1142 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1274 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1290 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1262 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1288 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1248 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1277 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen Max?
Qwen Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.7 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen Max?
Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen Max better for coding?
Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.4 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Magistral Small does, with 128K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen Max share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Max has 23.