Model comparison
Mistral Small 3 vs Qwen3-30B-A3B
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-30B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 21 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 21 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-30B-A3B in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3-30B-A3B leads 55.6 to 32.2.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 6.7% for Mistral Small 3 and 70.3% for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.12 / $0.50 for Qwen3-30B-A3B.
- Qwen3-30B-A3B accepts more context: 41K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.2 | 38.9 |
| Released | 2025-01-30 | 2025-04-28 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 33K | 41K |
| Max output | 16K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.12 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.08 | $0.50 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 32 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.5 (#194)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | 1416 |
| SciCode | — | 33.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 29.8% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: —, Qwen3-30B-A3B: 29.8 (#82)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 41.4% |
Reasoning Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 22.2 (#204)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 8% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | 1398 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.07 | 139.63 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| DTBench | — | 69.3% |
| LMCA | — | 22.4% |
Math Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 37.4 (#157)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | 70.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | 1394 |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 47.8% |
Knowledge Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 41.8 (#105)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | 70.1% |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | 12.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | 1396 |
Multilingual Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 49.5 (#132)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | 1372 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | 1433 |
| LMArena French | 1203 | 1418 |
| LMArena German | 1211 | 1380 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | 1337 |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | 1331 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1370 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1404 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 72.0 (#142)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | 1363 |
Long Context Mistral Small 3 leads
Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 31.0 (#283)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | 1379 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 40.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-30B-A3B leads
Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280), Qwen3-30B-A3B: 55.6 (#143)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-30B-A3B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | 1384 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | 1317 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | 1378 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 75.3% |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3 better than Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Qwen3-30B-A3B is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.9 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.7× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-30B-A3B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3-30B-A3B?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Qwen3-30B-A3B lists at $0.12 and $0.50.
Is Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3-30B-A3B better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (36.5 vs 37.5); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-30B-A3B does, with 41K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Qwen3-30B-A3B share?
21 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-30B-A3B has 32.