Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen3 235B-A22B
Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 235B-A22B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 10 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 10 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 235B-A22B in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 235B-A22B leads 50.4 to 26.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 6.3% for Magistral Small and 69.4% for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen3 235B-A22B.
- Qwen3 235B-A22B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 43.5 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 131K |
| Max output | 40K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.70 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $2.80 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 49 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3 235B-A22B leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 44.3 (#75)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | 42.4% |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 59.6% |
| WeirdML | — | 41% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1445 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 33.9 (#51)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 52.1% |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | -11.34 |
Reasoning Qwen3 235B-A22B leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 15.7 (#311)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | 1.3% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | 69.4% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | 11% |
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0% |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | 12% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 80.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | 143.85 |
| SimpleBench | — | 31% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1433 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 9% |
| LMCA | — | 29.3% |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.7 |
Math Qwen3 235B-A22B leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 50.4 (#57)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 86.7% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 71.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1432 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 68.9% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 8.5% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |
Knowledge Qwen3 235B-A22B leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen3 235B-A22B: 49.6 (#73)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 80.1% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 40.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 84.4% |
| Confabulations | — | 15.6% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 72.7% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1463 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 52.3 (#89)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1409 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1481 |
| LMArena French | — | 1445 |
| LMArena German | — | 1433 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1399 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1391 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1411 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1430 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 72.6 (#136)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 83.5% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1408 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 46.1 (#26)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 75% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1426 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3 235B-A22B: 59.6 (#108)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3 235B-A22B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1419 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1384 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 83% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1366 |
| WildBench | — | 86.6% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1432 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3 235B-A22B?
Qwen3 235B-A22B is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 235B-A22B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3 235B-A22B?
Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3 235B-A22B lists at $0.70 and $2.80.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen3 235B-A22B better for coding?
Qwen3 235B-A22B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 44.3 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3 235B-A22B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3 235B-A22B share?
10 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 235B-A22B has 49.