Model comparison
Ministral 8B vs Qwen Max
Qwen Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.7 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 14 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 14 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen Max in 6 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Max leads 30.3 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.9% for Ministral 8B and 67.2% for Qwen Max.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.60 / $6.40 for Qwen Max.
- Ministral 8B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 33K.
- Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Ministral 8B | Qwen Max | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 34.7 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2024-04-03 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 33K |
| Max output | 262K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $1.60 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $6.40 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 23 |
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Category by category
Coding Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Qwen Max: 30.7 (#292)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1288 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 21.8% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Qwen Max: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |
Reasoning Qwen Max leads
Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Qwen Max: 25.1 (#151)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1269 |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |
Math Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Qwen Max: 22.3 (#276)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1275 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | 67.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 16.1% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1% |
Knowledge Qwen Max leads
Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Qwen Max: 30.3 (#228)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | 56.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1248 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |
Multilingual Qwen Max leads
Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Qwen Max: 41.8 (#202)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1263 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1254 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1274 |
| LMArena French | — | 1330 |
| LMArena German | — | 1254 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1205 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1142 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1290 |
Instruction Following Qwen Max leads
Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Qwen Max: 66.5 (#208)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1262 |
Long Context Qwen Max leads
Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Qwen Max: 39.4 (#180)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1288 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
Writing & Preference Qwen Max leads
Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Qwen Max: 47.8 (#205)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1282 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1248 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1277 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen Max?
Qwen Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.7 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 19× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen Max?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen Max lists at $1.60 and $6.40.
Is Ministral 8B or Qwen Max better for coding?
Ministral 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.0 versus 30.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Ministral 8B does, with 262K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen Max share?
14 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Max has 23.