Model comparison
Mistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 18 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 54.1 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 5.8% for Mistral Small and 91.1% for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 51.5 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2026-04-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 262K |
| Max output | 256K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $1.30 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.60 | $7.80 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 29 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.7 (#54)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1362 | 1471 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1482 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,254 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 41.7 (#53)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1457 |
| DTBench | 70.9% | 87.2% |
| LMCA | 20.6% | 42.5% |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 74.1% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 149.24 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |
Math Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.1 (#46)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1465 |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#39)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 87.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1291 | 1478 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 52% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.2 (#48)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1437 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1340 | 1487 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1449 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1445 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | 1454 |
| LMArena German | 1340 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1259 | — |
Instruction Following Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.7 (#55)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1438 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
Long Context Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#61)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1457 |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads
Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171), Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 63.8 (#60)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1305 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1456 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.
Is Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.7 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Both accept 262K tokens.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?
18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.