Model comparison
Ministral 3B vs Qwen Plus
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 4 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Plus leads 27.4 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 65.3% for Qwen Plus.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Ministral 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 25.6 | 36.7 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2024-01-25 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 6 | 20 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen Plus: 38.3 (#163)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |
Reasoning Qwen Plus leads
Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278), Qwen Plus: 27.6 (#101)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51.7% | 81.1% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | 24% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.08 | — |
Math Ministral 3B leads
Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257), Qwen Plus: 22.0 (#266)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | 65.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 17.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |
Knowledge Qwen Plus leads
Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#245)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 48.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen Plus: 45.3 (#170)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen Plus: 69.0 (#176)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |
Long Context Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#153)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1325 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen Plus: 52.4 (#171)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 3B better than Qwen Plus?
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Qwen Plus?
Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Qwen Plus share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.