Model comparison
Mistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Flash
Qwen3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Flash's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 5 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Flash in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Flash leads 39.0 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 5.8% for Mistral Small and 84.4% for Qwen3.6 Flash.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.19 / $1.13 for Qwen3.6 Flash.
- Qwen3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 38.8 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2026-04-27 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 1M |
| Max output | 256K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.19 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.60 | $1.13 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 13 |
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Category by category
Coding Not comparable
Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | 326.4 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1362 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250), Qwen3.6 Flash: 29.0 (#96)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 70.9% | 77.1% |
| LMCA | 20.6% | 31% |
| SimpleBench | — | 35.2% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 18% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 143.26 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |
Math Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293), Qwen3.6 Flash: 39.0 (#117)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 84.4% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 22.5% |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 10.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Flash leads
Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222), Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.1 (#100)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 83.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.9% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1291 | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1340 | — |
| LMArena French | 1337 | — |
| LMArena German | 1340 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1259 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | — |
Instruction Following Not comparable
Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | — |
Long Context Not comparable
Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171), Qwen3.6 Flash: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1305 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Flash?
Qwen3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Flash's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Flash?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Flash lists at $0.19 and $1.13.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Flash does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Qwen3.6 Flash share?
5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.