Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen3.5-Flash
Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-Flash in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5-Flash leads 33.7 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 30% for Magistral Small and 84.4% for Qwen3.5-Flash.
- Qwen3.5-Flash is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.40 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $1.50 for Magistral Small.
- Qwen3.5-Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 42.5 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 40K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $0.40 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen3.5-Flash: 34.2 (#242)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1244 |
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1412 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 221.8 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5-Flash: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 462.69 |
Reasoning Qwen3.5-Flash leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen3.5-Flash: 33.7 (#72)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | 21% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 82.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | 143.98 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1403 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 20% |
| LMCA | — | 29.1% |
Math Qwen3.5-Flash leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen3.5-Flash: 37.4 (#158)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 84.4% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.2% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1407 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 6.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-Flash leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen3.5-Flash: 43.2 (#93)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 82.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 20.3% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.5% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1407 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5-Flash: 50.5 (#121)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1385 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1446 |
| LMArena French | — | 1412 |
| LMArena German | — | 1390 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1368 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1344 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1379 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1400 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5-Flash: 72.6 (#139)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1374 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5-Flash: 42.4 (#124)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1392 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.5-Flash: 57.9 (#122)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1397 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1343 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1393 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3.5-Flash?
Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3.5-Flash?
Qwen3.5-Flash is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.40 per million output tokens; Magistral Small lists at $0.50 and $1.50.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen3.5-Flash better for coding?
Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.4 versus 34.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.5-Flash does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3.5-Flash share?
5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-Flash has 32.