Model comparison
Mistral Small 3 vs Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 16 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 16 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct in 7 categories; 7 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads 58.2 to 32.4.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $2 for Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 42.5 |
| Released | 2025-01-30 | 2025-09 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 33K | 131K |
| Max output | 16K | 33K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.05 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.08 | $2 |
| Results tracked | 24 | 25 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.9 (#101)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | 1441 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 30.1 (#79)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | 1428 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 66.7% |
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.06 | — |
Math Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 36.3 (#118)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1240 | 1440 |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | — |
| Omni-MATH | — | 46.7% |
Knowledge Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 41.3 (#102)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | 1416 |
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | — |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 78.6% |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 9.3% |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 63% |
Multilingual Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 52.3 (#88)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | 1407 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | 1461 |
| LMArena French | 1202 | 1415 |
| LMArena German | 1211 | 1416 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | 1398 |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | 1366 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1403 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1436 |
Instruction Following Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 71.0 (#154)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | 1388 |
| IFEval | — | 81% |
Long Context Too close to call
Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 37.0 (#218)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | 1403 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 55.6% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct leads
Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275), Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct: 58.2 (#116)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | 1417 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | 1415 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
| WildBench | — | 80.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small 3 better than Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.5 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct lists at $0.50 and $2.
Is Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct better for coding?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.9 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 33K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct share?
16 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Next 80B-A3B Instruct has 25.