Model comparison
Mistral Medium vs Qwen3.5-9B
Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 6 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium scores higher in 2 categories and Qwen3.5-9B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 46.0 to 25.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 32.2% for Mistral Medium and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium.
Side by side
| Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 36.3 | 33.8 |
| Released | 2023-12-11 | 2026-02-23 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 262K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $0.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $7.50 | $0.15 |
| Results tracked | 36 | 10 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.5-9B leads
Mistral Medium: 34.2 (#243), Qwen3.5-9B: 35.9 (#217)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 40.2% | 27.5% |
| FrontierCode | 8% | — |
| WeirdML | 43.7% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1434 | — |
| ALE-Bench | 763.98 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Mistral Medium leads
Mistral Medium: 28.3 (#90), Qwen3.5-9B: 14.5 (#151)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.7% | — |
Reasoning Too close to call
Mistral Medium: 24.0 (#167), Qwen3.5-9B: 23.1 (#182)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0.3% |
| DTBench | 75.5% | 71.2% |
| LMCA | 26.1% | 24.5% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 50% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1426 | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 26.9% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.46 |
Math Qwen3.5-9B leads
Mistral Medium: 28.1 (#245), Qwen3.5-9B: 34.8 (#192)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 32.2% | 61.7% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| ProofBench | 9% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1408 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 81.6% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | 0.3% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3.5-9B leads
Mistral Medium: 25.0 (#265), Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#84)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 59.5% | 79% |
| Humanity's Last Exam | 4.5% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 22.7% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1408 | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 35.3 (#88), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1172 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 52.1 (#91), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1408 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1447 | — |
| LMArena French | 1459 | — |
| LMArena German | 1432 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1378 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1380 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1411 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1433 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 73.7 (#116), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1398 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 42.9 (#114), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1406 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mistral Medium: 60.0 (#103), Qwen3.5-9B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1424 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1391 | — |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | 77.3% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1418 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Medium better than Qwen3.5-9B?
Mistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.3 to 33.8 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 27× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 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; Mistral Medium lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Mistral Medium or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?
Qwen3.5-9B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 35.9 versus 34.2 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium and Qwen3.5-9B share?
6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium has 36 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.