Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 7 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads 24.6 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 30% for Magistral Small and 70% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
- Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper at $0.25 / $2 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Qwen3.5 35B-A3B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 42.0 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-02-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 40K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.8 (#251)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | 29.3% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1410 |
Reasoning Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 24.6 (#161)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | 10% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 80% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | 142.52 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1400 |
| LMCA | — | 29.5% |
Math Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 39.9 (#97)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 70% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1404 |
Knowledge Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.8 (#79)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 83.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.5% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1408 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.0 (#127)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1378 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1457 |
| LMArena French | — | 1412 |
| LMArena German | — | 1367 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1356 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1376 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1392 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 72.8 (#128)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1379 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#127)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1389 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 57.9 (#124)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1395 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1346 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1390 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.25 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?
Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.4 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?
7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.