Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 1.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 7 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 7 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 51.8 to 26.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 30% for Magistral Small and 93.3% for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 47.5 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2026-03-31 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 40K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $3 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 37 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.8 (#130)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 35.2% | 40.7% |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1461 |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1467 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 670.15 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: —
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen3.6 Plus: 29.3 (#93)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 2.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | 17% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 81.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | 147.65 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1449 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LMCA | — | 33.1% |
Math Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen3.6 Plus: 51.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 93.3% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1450 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#45)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 88.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1454 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.3 (#70)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1477 |
| LMArena French | — | 1455 |
| LMArena German | — | 1452 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1379 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1432 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.0 (#74)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1425 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.2 (#49)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1439 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.2 (#82)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1404 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1438 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 1.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen3.6 Plus better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3.6 Plus share?
7 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.