# Codestral vs Qwen3.6 Plus

> Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-qwen3-6-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 1

## Summary

- They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Plus in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3.6 Plus leads 40.8 to 27.3.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $0.50 / $3 for Qwen3.6 Plus.
- Qwen3.6 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 256K.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 47.5 |
| Rank | 290 | 62 |
| Context | 256K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $0.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $3 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 40.8 (#130)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 670.15 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 57.9% |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1461 |
| SciCode | — | 40.7% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1467 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 5,115 |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 29.3 (#93)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 60.3% |
| CritPt | — | 2.9% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| Thematic Generalization | — | 59.5% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1449 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 12% |
| DTBench | — | 81.9% |
| LMCA | — | 33.1% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 147.65 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 51.8 (#54)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 38.2% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 93.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1450 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 26.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 8.3% |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 56.1 (#45)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 88.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 44.1% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1454 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 53.3 (#70)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1424 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1477 |
| LMArena French | — | 1455 |
| LMArena German | — | 1452 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1389 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1379 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1434 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1432 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 75.0 (#74)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1425 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 45.2 (#49)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 20.3% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1439 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3.6 Plus: 62.2 (#82)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1437 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1404 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1438 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Qwen3.6 Plus?

Qwen3.6 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 47.5 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 2.5× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Qwen3.6 Plus?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus lists at $0.50 and $3.

### Is Codestral or Qwen3.6 Plus better for coding?

Qwen3.6 Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.8 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 256K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Qwen3.6 Plus share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Plus has 37.