Model comparison

Ministral 3B vs Qwen3 Max

Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.5 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 60× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 5 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 3B

Mistral AI

25.6

Rank #336 Confirmed

Qwen3 Max

Alibaba (Qwen)

43.5

Rank #82 Confirmed

Summary

They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 Max in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3 Max leads 48.1 to 10.4.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 97.1% for Qwen3 Max.
Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
Ministral 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Ministral 3B and Qwen3 Max specifications
	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
Provider	Mistral AI	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	25.6	43.5
Released	2024-10-01	2025-09-23
Weights	Open	Proprietary
Context window	128K	262K
Max output	128K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.04	$1.20
Output $ / M tokens	$0.04	$6
Results tracked	6	33

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3 Max: 42.4 (#93)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Coding	—	1456
ALE-Bench	—	370.45

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3 Max: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
Vending-Bench 2	—	71.56

Reasoning Qwen3 Max leads

Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278), Qwen3 Max: 22.0 (#186)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
DTBench	51.7%	82.1%
LMCA	5.5%	28.3%
Epoch Capabilities Index	118.08	142.41
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	72.5%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	30.1%
Chess Puzzles	—	4%
LMArena Hard Prompts	—	1448
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	5%

Math Qwen3 Max leads

Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257), Qwen3 Max: 37.6 (#94)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
MATH Level 5	14.4%	97.1%
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	—	18.9%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	73.3%
LMArena Math	—	1447

Knowledge Qwen3 Max leads

Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297), Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#72)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
GPQA Diamond	25.3%	72.6%
SimpleQA Verified	—	48.7%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	7.3%	—
LMArena Expert	—	1457

Multilingual Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3 Max: 53.9 (#58)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Non-English	—	1429
LMArena Chinese	—	1479
LMArena French	—	1450
LMArena German	—	1463
LMArena Japanese	—	1399
LMArena Korean	—	1397
LMArena Russian	—	1428
LMArena Spanish	—	1463

Instruction Following Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3 Max: 75.0 (#81)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Instruction Following	—	1420

Long Context Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#129)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
Fiction.LiveBench	—	66.7%
CL-bench	—	14.5%
LMArena Longer Query	—	1439

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Qwen3 Max: 62.6 (#72)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Qwen3 Max
LMArena Text	—	1439
LMArena Creative Writing	—	1401
LMArena Multi-Turn	—	1446

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 3B better than Qwen3 Max?

Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Qwen3 Max?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Qwen3 Max share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.