Model comparison
Ministral 8B vs Qwen3.5 35B-A3B
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 35B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 15 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads 47.8 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 27.1% for Ministral 8B and 83.5% for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.25 / $2 for Qwen3.5 35B-A3B.
Side by side
| Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 42.0 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2026-02-01 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.25 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 28 |
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Category by category
Coding Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 33.8 (#251)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1410 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1254 |
| SciCode | — | 29.3% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 24.6 (#161)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1400 |
| DTBench | 45.7% | 80% |
| CritPt | — | 0.6% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 10% |
| LMCA | — | 29.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.52 |
Math Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 39.9 (#97)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1404 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 56% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 70% |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 47.8 (#79)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | 83.5% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | 10.5% |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1408 |
Multilingual Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 50.0 (#127)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1378 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1457 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1376 |
| LMArena French | — | 1412 |
| LMArena German | — | 1367 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1356 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1392 |
Instruction Following Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 72.8 (#128)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1379 |
Long Context Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 42.4 (#127)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1389 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.5 35B-A3B leads
Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Qwen3.5 35B-A3B: 57.9 (#124)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5 35B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1395 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1346 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1390 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?
Qwen3.5 35B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.0 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 35B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 35B-A3B lists at $0.25 and $2.
Is Ministral 8B or Qwen3.5 35B-A3B better for coding?
Ministral 8B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.0 versus 33.8 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B share?
15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 35B-A3B has 28.