Model comparison

Ministral 3B vs Qwen3-30B-A3B

Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 26.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 2.1× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-30B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 4 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 3B

Mistral AI

26.2

Rank #338 Confirmed

Qwen3-30B-A3B

Alibaba (Qwen)

38.9

Rank #179 Confirmed

Summary

They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 41.8 to 10.4.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 25.3% for Ministral 3B and 70.1% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $0.12 / $0.50 for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
Ministral 3B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 41K.

Side by side

Ministral 3B and Qwen3-30B-A3B specifications
	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
Provider	Mistral AI	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	26.2	38.9
Released	2024-10-01	2025-04-28
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	131K	41K
Max output	262K	16K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.10	$0.12
Output $ / M tokens	$0.10	$0.50
Results tracked	6	32

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
SciCode	—	33.3%
WeirdML	—	29.8%
LMArena Coding	—	1416

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	41.4%

Reasoning Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Ministral 3B: 18.4 (#282), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
DTBench	51.7%	69.3%
LMCA	5.5%	22.4%
Epoch Capabilities Index	118.1	139.63
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	54.9%
CritPt	—	0.3%
Chess Puzzles	—	8%
LMArena Hard Prompts	—	1398

Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Ministral 3B: 26.6 (#258), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
MathArena Final-Answer Competitions	—	47.8%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	70.3%
LMArena Math	—	1394
MATH Level 5	14.4%	—

Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads

Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#302), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
GPQA Diamond	25.3%	70.1%
Confabulations	—	12.3%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	7.3%	—
LMArena Expert	—	1396

Multilingual Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Non-English	—	1372
LMArena Chinese	—	1433
LMArena French	—	1418
LMArena German	—	1380
LMArena Japanese	—	1337
LMArena Korean	—	1331
LMArena Russian	—	1370
LMArena Spanish	—	1404

Instruction Following Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Instruction Following	—	1363

Long Context Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
Fiction.LiveBench	—	40.6%
LMArena Longer Query	—	1379

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3-30B-A3B
LMArena Text	—	1384
LMArena Creative Writing	—	1317
Short-Story Creative Writing	—	75.3%
LMArena Multi-Turn	—	1378

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 3B better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Qwen3-30B-A3B?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; Qwen3-30B-A3B lists at $0.12 and $0.50.

Which has the bigger context window?

Ministral 3B does, with 131K tokens against 41K.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.