# Codestral vs Qwen3 Max

> Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 5.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/codestral-vs-qwen3-max
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Codestral scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3 Max in 2 categories; 2 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in coding, where Qwen3 Max leads 43.0 to 27.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 32.5% for Codestral and 72.5% for Qwen3 Max.
- Codestral is cheaper at $0.30 / $0.90 per million input/output tokens, against $1.20 / $6 for Qwen3 Max.
- Qwen3 Max accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.

## Snapshot

| | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.6 | 43.7 |
| Rank | 290 | 87 |
| Context | 256K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.30 | $1.20 |
| Output $/M | $0.90 | $6 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Codestral: 27.3 (#321)
- Qwen3 Max: 43.0 (#93)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 137.78 | 370.45 |
| Aider Polyglot | 11.1% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 41.8% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1456 |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 52.5% | — |
| HumanEval+ | 73.8% | — |
| MBPP+ | 61.9% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: —

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 71.56 |

## Reasoning

- Codestral: 19.8 (#251)
- Qwen3 Max: 22.6 (#190)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 32.5% | 72.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 30.1% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 4% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1448 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 5% |
| DTBench | — | 82.1% |
| LMCA | — | 28.3% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 142.38 |

## Math

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: 38.7 (#131)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.9% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 73.3% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1446 |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 97.1% |

## Knowledge

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: 48.1 (#78)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 72.6% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 48.7% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1455 |

## Multilingual

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: 53.7 (#62)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1429 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1478 |
| LMArena French | — | 1449 |
| LMArena German | — | 1463 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1397 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1399 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1428 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1462 |

## Instruction Following

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: 74.8 (#87)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1419 |

## Long Context

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: 41.6 (#134)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 66.7% |
| CL-bench | — | 14.5% |
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1438 |

## Writing & Preference

- Codestral: —
- Qwen3 Max: 62.4 (#76)

| Benchmark | Codestral | Qwen3 Max |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1439 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1402 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1446 |

## FAQ

### Is Codestral better than Qwen3 Max?

Qwen3 Max is the stronger model overall, scoring 43.7 to 30.6 on the Noometry Index. Codestral costs 5.3× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3 Max's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Codestral or Qwen3 Max?

Codestral is cheaper. It lists at $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Qwen3 Max lists at $1.20 and $6.

### Is Codestral or Qwen3 Max better for coding?

Qwen3 Max scores higher on coding benchmarks: 43.0 versus 27.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3 Max does, with 262K tokens against 256K.

### How many benchmarks do Codestral and Qwen3 Max share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Codestral has 7 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 Max has 33.