Model comparison
Ministral 3B vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.3 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 28× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 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 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 56.1 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 25.3% for Ministral 3B and 88.4% for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Ministral 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 25.6 | 47.3 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2026-03-31 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 128K | 1M |
| Max output | 128K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.04 | $3 |
| Results tracked | 6 | 37 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.6 (#125)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1461 |
| SciCode | — | 40.7% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1467 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 670.15 |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278), Qwen3.6 Plus: 28.5 (#89)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51.7% | 81.9% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | 33.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.08 | 147.67 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| CritPt | — | 2.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1449 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
Math Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257), Qwen3.6 Plus: 50.6 (#44)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 93.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1450 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297), Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#40)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 88.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1456 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.5 (#66)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1478 |
| LMArena French | — | 1454 |
| LMArena German | — | 1451 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1381 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1432 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.2 (#70)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1425 |
Long Context Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.1 (#48)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1440 |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.4 (#78)
| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1405 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1438 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 3B better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.3 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 28× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Qwen3.6 Plus share?
4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.