# Magistral Medium vs Qwen3.5-9B

> Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.8 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/magistral-medium-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 2

## Summary

- They share 2 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Medium scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-9B in 3 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 22.5 to 8.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is SciCode: 39.2% for Magistral Medium and 27.5% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $2 / $5 for Magistral Medium.
- Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 34.8 | 33.3 |
| Rank | 224 | 235 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $2 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $5 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Magistral Medium: 38.6 (#161)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | 39.2% | 27.5% |
| LMArena Coding | 1319 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Magistral Medium: —
- Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |

## Reasoning

- Magistral Medium: 8.7 (#342)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| CritPt | 0.3% | 0.3% |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 16.2% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 6.1% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 12% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1267 | — |
| DTBench | — | 71.2% |
| LMCA | — | 24.5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 139.45 |

## Math

- Magistral Medium: 32.4 (#187)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 61.7% |
| LMArena Math | 1249 | — |

## Knowledge

- Magistral Medium: 32.9 (#199)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | — | 79% |
| LMArena Expert | 1222 | — |

## Multilingual

- Magistral Medium: 39.8 (#219)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1232 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1225 | — |
| LMArena French | 1268 | — |
| LMArena German | 1248 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1176 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1125 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1224 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1269 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Magistral Medium: 66.2 (#207)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1254 | — |

## Long Context

- Magistral Medium: 39.3 (#178)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1295 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Magistral Medium: 46.5 (#214)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Medium | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1245 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1275 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Magistral Medium better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Magistral Medium is the stronger model overall, scoring 34.8 to 33.3 on the Noometry Index. Qwen3.5-9B costs 24× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Magistral Medium's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Magistral Medium or Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen3.5-9B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Magistral Medium lists at $2 and $5.

### Is Magistral Medium or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

Magistral Medium scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.6 versus 35.3 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Magistral Medium and Qwen3.5-9B share?

2 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Medium has 22 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.