Model comparison
Mistral Small 3 vs Qwen3 32B
Qwen3 32B is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.2 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 21× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 32B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 32B in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 32B leads 39.7 to 16.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 6.7% for Mistral Small 3 and 66.9% for Qwen3 32B.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.70 / $2.80 for Qwen3 32B.
- Qwen3 32B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.2 | 39.2 |
| Released | 2025-01-30 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 33K | 131K |
| Max output | 16K | 16K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.70 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.08 | $2.80 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 26 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 36.5 (#207), Qwen3 32B: 37.7 (#190)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | 1358 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 40% |
| SciCode | — | 35.4% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small 3: —, Qwen3 32B: 32.6 (#62)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 48.7% |
Reasoning Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 18.9 (#273), Qwen3 32B: 20.2 (#241)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | 1334 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.07 | 138.51 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 54.9% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| DTBench | — | 67.5% |
| LMCA | — | 17.3% |
Math Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 16.3 (#295), Qwen3 32B: 39.7 (#99)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | 66.9% |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | 1399 |
Knowledge Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 25.1 (#263), Qwen3 32B: 40.0 (#125)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | 65.7% |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | 1362 |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 5.9% |
Multilingual Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 37.3 (#236), Qwen3 32B: 45.6 (#167)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | 1317 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | 1357 |
| LMArena German | 1211 | 1341 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1311 |
| LMArena French | 1203 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | — |
Instruction Following Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 63.7 (#229), Qwen3 32B: 68.9 (#179)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | 1305 |
Long Context Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#211), Qwen3 32B: 43.8 (#87)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | 1327 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 74.2% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3 32B leads
Mistral Small 3: 32.2 (#280), Qwen3 32B: 52.9 (#163)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3 32B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | 1340 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | 1297 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | 1331 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3 better than Qwen3 32B?
Qwen3 32B is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.2 to 31.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 21× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 32B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3 32B?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Qwen3 32B lists at $0.70 and $2.80.
Is Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3 32B better for coding?
Qwen3 32B scores higher on coding benchmarks: 37.7 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3 32B does, with 131K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Qwen3 32B share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 32B has 26.