Model comparison
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Qwen2.5 7B Instruct
Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 28.6 on the Noometry Index.
Last verified . 9 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct in 1 category; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads 48.8 to 37.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro: 61% for Mistral Small 3.1 and 53.9% for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct is cheaper at $0.17 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $0.35 / $0.56 for Mistral Small 3.1.
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.4 | 28.6 |
| Released | 2025-03-17 | 2024-09 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 128K | 131K |
| Max output | 102K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.35 | $0.17 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.56 | $0.70 |
| Results tracked | 28 | 15 |
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Category by category
Coding Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Mistral Small 3.1: 37.7 (#175), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 35.9 (#204)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 37.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1309 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.1% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.1: —, Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 23.5 (#117)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | — | 7.8% |
Reasoning Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Mistral Small 3.1: 18.9 (#249), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 14.3 (#317)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | 0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.48 | 118.44 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1278 | — |
| DTBench | — | 47.7% |
| LMCA | — | 6.4% |
Math Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Mistral Small 3.1: 13.7 (#295), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 11.8 (#300)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.9% | 2.5% |
| Omni-MATH | 24.8% | 29.4% |
| LMArena Math | 1261 | — |
Knowledge Mistral Small 3.1 leads
Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#266), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 17.0 (#281)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 41.9% | 35.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | 61% | 53.9% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.2% | 34.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1258 | — |
| MMLU | — | 72.9% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.1: 32.6 (#93), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1136 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.1: 41.4 (#204), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1254 | — |
| LMArena French | 1270 | — |
| LMArena German | 1266 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1210 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1206 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1263 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1283 | — |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Mistral Small 3.1: 63.8 (#225), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 63.4 (#226)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 75% | 74.1% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1264 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#172), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1300 | — |
Writing & Preference Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3.1: 37.2 (#254), Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 48.8 (#194)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WildBench | 78.8% | 73.1% |
| LMArena Text | 1278 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1253 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 761 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1270 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3.1 better than Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?
Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.4 to 28.6 on the Noometry Index.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.1 or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?
Qwen2.5 7B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.17 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3.1 lists at $0.35 and $0.56.
Is Mistral Small 3.1 or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct better for coding?
Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 35.9 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen2.5 7B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 128K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.1 and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct share?
9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.1 has 28 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct has 15.