Model comparison
Ministral 8B vs Qwen3.5-9B
Qwen3.5-9B is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.8 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 2 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-9B in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 46.0 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 27.1% for Ministral 8B and 79% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.15 / $0.15 for Ministral 8B.
Side by side
| Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 27.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Ministral 8B leads
Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.5-9B leads
Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 45.7% | 71.2% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | — |
| LMCA | — | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.46 |
Math Qwen3.5-9B leads
Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 61.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1188 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads
Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | 79% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3.5-9B is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.8 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen3.5-9B?
Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Ministral 8B lists at $0.15 and $0.15.
Is Ministral 8B or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (35.0 vs 35.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen3.5-9B share?
2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.