Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen Plus
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen Plus in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen Plus leads 28.4 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 6.3% for Magistral Small and 63.3% for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus is cheaper at $0.40 / $1.20 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 37.1 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2024-01-25 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 40K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 20 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |
Reasoning Qwen Plus leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | 63.3% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 81.1% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| LMCA | — | 24% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
Math Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 17.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 65.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |
Knowledge Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 48.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1324 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen Plus?
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen Plus?
Qwen Plus is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $1.20 per million output tokens; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen Plus better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (38.4 vs 38.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen Plus share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.