# Magistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview

> Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 3.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/magistral-small-vs-qwen3-6-max-preview
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 5

## Summary

- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Magistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 41.7 to 6.8.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 30% for Magistral Small and 91.1% for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Magistral Small is cheaper at $0.50 / $1.50 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.
- Magistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.2 | 51.5 |
| Rank | 296 | 43 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.50 | $1.30 |
| Output $/M | $1.50 | $7.80 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Magistral Small: 38.4 (#176)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.7 (#54)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1482 |
| SciCode | 35.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1471 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Magistral Small: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,254 |

## Reasoning

- Magistral Small: 6.8 (#350)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 41.7 (#53)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 3% | 20% |
| DTBench | 61.3% | 87.2% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 133.19 | 149.24 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 0% | — |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 6.3% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 74.1% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 5% | — |
| CritPt | 0.3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1457 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| LMCA | — | 42.5% |

## Math

- Magistral Small: 26.2 (#261)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.1 (#46)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 30% | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1465 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Magistral Small: 30.9 (#223)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#39)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 56.1% | 87.4% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 52% |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1478 |

## Multilingual

- Magistral Small: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.2 (#48)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1437 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1487 |
| LMArena French | — | 1449 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1445 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1454 |

## Instruction Following

- Magistral Small: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.7 (#55)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1438 |

## Long Context

- Magistral Small: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#61)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1457 |

## Writing & Preference

- Magistral Small: —
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 63.8 (#60)

| Benchmark | Magistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1456 |

## FAQ

### Is Magistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.5 to 30.2 on the Noometry Index. Magistral Small costs 3.9× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Magistral Small or Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Magistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.50 per million input tokens and $1.50 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.

### Is Magistral Small or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.7 versus 38.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Magistral Small and Qwen3.6 Max Preview share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Magistral Small has 10 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.