Model comparison

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3 8B

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3 8B costs 9.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 1 shared benchmarks.

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral AI

39.6

Rank #151 Confirmed

Qwen3 8B

Alibaba (Qwen)

33.3

Rank #237 Confirmed

Summary

They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen3 8B in 0 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in long context, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 43.2 to 37.8.
Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.

Side by side

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3 8B specifications
	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
Provider	Mistral AI	Alibaba (Qwen)
Noometry Index	39.6	33.3
Released	—	2025-04
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	262K	131K
Max output	210K	8K
Input $ / M tokens	$1.50	$0.18
Output $ / M tokens	$7.50	$0.70
Results tracked	22	11

Sponsored placements are available on pages like this one. Advertise on Noometry

Category by category

Coding Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 35.7 (#208), Qwen3 8B: 33.4 (#245)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
LMArena WebDev	1263	—
SciCode	—	22.6%
LMArena Coding	1461	—

Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: —, Qwen3 8B: 29.9 (#71)

Agentic & Tool Use benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard	—	42.6%

Reasoning Too close to call

Mistral Medium 3.5: 16.6 (#290), Qwen3 8B: 16.1 (#299)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
Epoch Capabilities Index	141.42	136.17
Kagi LLM Benchmark	41.4%	—
NYT Connections (extended)	12.9%	—
CritPt	—	0%
Chess Puzzles	—	5%
LMArena Hard Prompts	1436	—
DTBench	—	59.7%
LMCA	—	8.8%

Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.4 (#113), Qwen3 8B: 33.3 (#176)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025	—	56.1%
LMArena Math	1432	—

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.3 (#123), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#164)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
GPQA Diamond	—	56.8%
Vectara Hallucination Rate	—	4.8%
LMArena Expert	1431	—

Multimodal Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: 37.6 (#64), Qwen3 8B: —

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
LMArena Vision	1222	—

Multilingual Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: 52.1 (#93), Qwen3 8B: —

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
LMArena Non-English	1405	—
LMArena Chinese	1443	—
LMArena French	1448	—
LMArena German	1453	—
LMArena Korean	1387	—
LMArena Russian	1396	—
LMArena Spanish	1406	—

Instruction Following Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.7 (#87), Qwen3 8B: —

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
LMArena Instruction Following	1414	—

Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#101), Qwen3 8B: 37.8 (#205)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
Fiction.LiveBench	—	62.1%
LMArena Longer Query	1414	—

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.6 (#113), Qwen3 8B: —

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3 8B
LMArena Text	1421	—
LMArena Creative Writing	1372	—
EQ-Bench 4	993	—
LMArena Multi-Turn	1423	—

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Qwen3 8B?

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.7 versus 33.4 in the Noometry coding category.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3 8B share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.