Model comparison
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 40.2 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 41.7 to 17.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 12.9% for Mistral Medium 3.5 and 74.1% for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Both cost about the same: $1.50 input and $7.50 output per million tokens.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 40.2 | 51.5 |
| Released | — | 2026-04-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 210K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $1.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $7.50 | $7.80 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 29 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.7 (#54)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1264 | 1482 |
| LMArena Coding | 1461 | 1471 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Medium 3.5: —, Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,254 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 41.7 (#53)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 12.9% | 74.1% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1436 | 1457 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.35 | 149.24 |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 41.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| DTBench | — | 87.2% |
| LMCA | — | 42.5% |
Math Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.1 (#46)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1431 | 1465 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 91.1% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#39)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1432 | 1478 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 87.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 52% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1223 | — |
Multilingual Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.2 (#48)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1404 | 1437 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1442 | 1487 |
| LMArena French | 1448 | 1449 |
| LMArena Russian | 1395 | 1445 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1409 | 1454 |
| LMArena German | 1451 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1385 | — |
Instruction Following Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.7 (#55)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1415 | 1438 |
Long Context Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#61)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1415 | 1457 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 63.8 (#60)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1421 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1374 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1423 | 1456 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 993 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 40.2 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is cheaper. It lists at $1.30 per million input tokens and $7.80 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.7 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.