Model comparison
Mistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 24 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 24 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 51.8 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 5.8% for Mistral Small and 93.3% for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus 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 Plus | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 47.5 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2026-03-31 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 1M |
| Max output | 256K | 66K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.60 | $3 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 37 |
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Category by category
Coding Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247), Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.8 (#130)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 26.5% | 40.7% |
| LMArena Coding | 1362 | 1467 |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | 670.15 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1461 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93), Qwen3.6 Plus: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |
Reasoning Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250), Qwen3.6 Plus: 29.3 (#93)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 2.9% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | 1449 |
| DTBench | 70.9% | 81.9% |
| LMCA | 20.6% | 33.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.65 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |
Math Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293), Qwen3.6 Plus: 51.8 (#54)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 93.3% |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1450 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |
Knowledge Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222), Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#45)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 88.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1291 | 1454 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96), Qwen3.6 Plus: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169), Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.3 (#70)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1340 | 1477 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1455 |
| LMArena German | 1340 | 1452 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | 1259 | 1379 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | 1432 |
Instruction Following Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209), Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.0 (#74)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1425 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
Long Context Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156), Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.2 (#49)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1439 |
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |
Writing & Preference Qwen3.6 Plus leads
Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171), Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.2 (#82)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1305 | 1404 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1438 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 4.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.
Is Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Plus better for coding?
Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Qwen3.6 Plus share?
24 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.