Model comparison
Mistral Small vs Qwen3 8B
Mistral Small and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.4 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Last verified . 8 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AI
Alibaba (Qwen)Summary
- They share 8 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 3 categories and Qwen3 8B in 3 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 8B leads 34.9 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 5.8% for Mistral Small and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.18 / $0.70 for Qwen3 8B.
- Mistral Small accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 131K.
Side by side
| Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 33.7 |
| Released | 2024-02-26 | 2025-04 |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 262K | 131K |
| Max output | 256K | 8K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $0.15 | $0.18 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $0.60 | $0.70 |
| Results tracked | 39 | 11 |
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Category by category
Coding Too close to call
Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247), Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 26.5% | 22.6% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1362 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Qwen3 8B leads
Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93), Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | 42.6% |
Reasoning Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250), Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0% | 0% |
| DTBench | 70.9% | 59.7% |
| LMCA | 20.6% | 8.8% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 5% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 136.17 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |
Math Qwen3 8B leads
Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293), Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 56.1% |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
Knowledge Qwen3 8B leads
Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222), Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 56.8% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | 4.8% |
| LMArena Expert | 1291 | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |
Multilingual Not comparable
Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| 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 8B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | — |
Long Context Mistral Small leads
Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156), Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | — |
Writing & Preference Not comparable
Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171), Qwen3 8B: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1305 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Small better than Qwen3 8B?
Mistral Small and Qwen3 8B score almost the same on the Noometry Index (33.4 vs 33.7), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Qwen3 8B?
Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3 8B lists at $0.18 and $0.70.
Is Mistral Small or Qwen3 8B better for coding?
They score almost the same on coding (34.0 vs 34.0); test both on your own repository before choosing.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Small does, with 262K tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Qwen3 8B share?
8 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.