Model comparison
Magistral Small vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 1 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 25.5 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 6.3% for Magistral Small and 49.5% for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 38.1 |
| Released | 2025-06-10 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 262K |
| Max output | 40K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.50 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 10 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Magistral Small leads
Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1412 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
Reasoning Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | 49.5% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1372 |
| DTBench | 61.3% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | — |
Math Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | — |
| LMArena Math | — | 1365 |
Knowledge Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1338 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1357 |
| LMArena French | — | 1398 |
| LMArena German | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1305 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1366 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1355 |
Long Context Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1378 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Magistral Small: —, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1365 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Magistral Small or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
Magistral Small scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.4 versus 35.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
1 benchmark has published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.