Model comparison
Ministral 8B vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 12 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 9 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 37.0 to 12.6.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
Side by side
| Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 38.1 |
| Released | 2024-10-01 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 17 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 35.5 (#223)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1412 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |
Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.9 (#123)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 25.5 (#149)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1372 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |
Math Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.6 (#150)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1365 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 37.0 (#162)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1338 |
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |
Multilingual Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.7 (#148)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1346 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1357 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1366 |
| LMArena French | — | 1398 |
| LMArena German | — | 1325 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1305 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.6 (#147)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1355 |
Long Context Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#131)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1378 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads
Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246), Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.3 (#147)
| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1357 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1365 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.1 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 20× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Ministral 8B or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (35.0 vs 35.5); 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-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?
12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.