Model comparison

Ministral 8B vs Qwen3.6 27B

Qwen3.6 27B is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.2 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 9.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 27B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 2 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 8B

Mistral AI

28.2

Rank #325 Confirmed

Qwen3.6 27B

Alibaba (Qwen)

42.2

Rank #117 Confirmed

Summary

They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 27B in 5 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.6 27B leads 52.4 to 12.6.
The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 27.1% for Ministral 8B and 85.9% for Qwen3.6 27B.
Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.60 / $3.60 for Qwen3.6 27B.

Side by side

Ministral 8B and Qwen3.6 27B specifications
	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
Provider	Mistral AI	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	28.2	42.2
Released	2024-10-01	2026-04-22
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	262K	262K
Max output	262K	66K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.15	$0.60
Output $ / M tokens	$0.15	$3.60
Results tracked	17	11

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Category by category

Coding Qwen3.6 27B leads

Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Qwen3.6 27B: 39.1 (#163)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
SciCode	—	37.3%
LMArena Coding	1202	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	11.1%	—

Reasoning Qwen3.6 27B leads

Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Qwen3.6 27B: 25.0 (#153)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
DTBench	45.7%	78.1%
CritPt	—	0.9%
Chess Puzzles	—	22%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1191	—
Mystery Game Puzzles	—	7%
LMCA	—	34.5%
Epoch Capabilities Index	—	146.5

Math Qwen3.6 27B leads

Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Qwen3.6 27B: 48.5 (#62)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3)	—	35.1%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	91.1%
LMArena Math	1188	—
MATH Level 5	14.9%	—

Knowledge Qwen3.6 27B leads

Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Qwen3.6 27B: 52.4 (#63)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
GPQA Diamond	27.1%	85.9%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	7.4%	—
LMArena Expert	1170	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Non-English	1165	—
LMArena Chinese	1193	—
LMArena Russian	1195	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Instruction Following	1161	—

Long Context Not comparable

Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Qwen3.6 27B: —

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Longer Query	1212	—

Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 27B leads

Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Qwen3.6 27B: 50.3 (#181)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 8B	Qwen3.6 27B
LMArena Text	1191	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1175	—
EQ-Bench 4	—	1026
LMArena Multi-Turn	1166	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen3.6 27B?

Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen3.6 27B?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 27B lists at $0.60 and $3.60.

Is Ministral 8B or Qwen3.6 27B better for coding?

Qwen3.6 27B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 39.1 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Both accept 262K tokens.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen3.6 27B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 27B has 11.