Model comparison
Mistral Small 3.2 vs Qwen Plus
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 4.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 3 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 3 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3.2 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen Plus leads 28.4 to 18.1.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 40.4% for Mistral Small 3.2 and 63.3% for Qwen Plus.
- Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper at $0.0938 / $0.25 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.
- Mistral Small 3.2 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.2 | 37.1 |
| Released | 2025-06-20 | 2024-01-25 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 256K | 1M |
| Max output | 16K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.0938 | $0.40 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.25 | $1.20 |
| Results tracked | 6 | 20 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |
Reasoning Qwen Plus leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 18.1 (#287), Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 40.4% | 63.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| DTBench | — | 81.1% |
| LMCA | — | 24% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 131.74 | — |
Math Mistral Small 3.2 leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 26.3 (#260), Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30.3% | 17.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 65.3% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Mistral Small 3.2: 26.7 (#256), Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 49.1% | 48.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |
Long Context Not comparable
Mistral Small 3.2: —, Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1324 |
Writing & Preference Qwen Plus leads
Mistral Small 3.2: 45.0 (#224), Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3.2 better than Qwen Plus?
Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.2 costs 4.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.2 or Qwen Plus?
Mistral Small 3.2 is cheaper. It lists at $0.0938 per million input tokens and $0.25 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.2 and Qwen Plus share?
3 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.2 has 6 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.