Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 397B-A17B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 6 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads 34.5 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 6.3% for Magistral Small and 73.7% for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.60 / $3.60 for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B.
- Qwen3.5 397B-A17B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 46.0 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-02-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 40K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.60 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $3.60 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 36 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 42.0 (#114)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1400 |
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1465 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 33.3 (#53)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | — | 24.9% |
| τ²-bench Airline | — | 81.5% |
| τ²-bench Banking | — | 9.8% |
| τ²-bench Retail | — | 84.4% |
| τ²-bench Telecom | — | 97.8% |
Reasoning Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 34.5 (#70)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | 73.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | 13% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 87.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | 146.65 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 58.9% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 65.1% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1448 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 18% |
| LMCA | — | 37.9% |
Math Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 46.1 (#73)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 88.9% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 31.2% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1454 |
Knowledge Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.3 (#58)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 86.4% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1462 |
Multimodal Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 40.7 (#44)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1263 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 53.7 (#59)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1430 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1500 |
| LMArena French | — | 1461 |
| LMArena German | — | 1447 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1426 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1384 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1429 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1441 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 75.0 (#77)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1424 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 44.1 (#74)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1442 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: 62.3 (#79)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5 397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1438 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1401 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | — | 1478 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1446 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?
Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is the stronger model overall, scoring 46.0 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 1.8× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 397B-A17B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?
Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 397B-A17B lists at $0.60 and $3.60.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B better for coding?
Qwen3.5 397B-A17B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 42.0 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5 397B-A17B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B share?
6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B has 36.