Noometry

Model comparison

Ministral 8B vs Qwen Plus

Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 8B Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Qwen Plus Alibaba (Qwen)

37.1

Rank #210 Confirmed

Summary

  • They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
  • The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Plus leads 27.4 to 12.6.
  • The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.9% for Ministral 8B and 65.3% for Qwen Plus.
  • Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
  • Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
  • Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

Side by side

Ministral 8BQwen Plus
ProviderMistral AIAlibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index28.237.1
Released2024-10-012024-01-25
WeightsOpenProprietary
Context window262K1M
Max output262K33K
Input $ / M tokens$0.15$0.40
Output $ / M tokens$0.15$1.20
Results tracked1720

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Category by category

Coding Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Coding12021328

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Qwen Plus: —

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard11.1%—

Reasoning Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Hard Prompts11911317
DTBench45.7%81.1%
Kagi LLM Benchmark—63.3%
LMCA—24%

Math Ministral 8B leads

Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Math11881326
MATH Level 514.9%65.3%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025—17.8%
FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set)—1.7%

Knowledge Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
GPQA Diamond27.1%48.1%
LMArena Expert11701328
Vectara Hallucination Rate7.4%—

Multilingual Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Non-English11651310
LMArena Chinese11931347
LMArena Russian11951323
LMArena Japanese—1251

Instruction Following Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Instruction Following11611303

Long Context Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Longer Query12121324

Writing & Preference Qwen Plus leads

Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

BenchmarkMinistral 8BQwen Plus
LMArena Text11911326
LMArena Creative Writing11751293
LMArena Multi-Turn11661336

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen Plus?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.

Is Ministral 8B or Qwen Plus better for coding?

Qwen Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.9 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen Plus share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.

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