# Ministral 3B vs Qwen Plus

> Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-3b-vs-qwen-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Plus leads 27.4 to 10.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.4% for Ministral 3B and 65.3% for Qwen Plus.
- Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Ministral 3B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 25.6 | 36.7 |
| Rank | 336 | 204 |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.04 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.04 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Ministral 3B: —
- Qwen Plus: 38.3 (#163)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | — | 1328 |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278)
- Qwen Plus: 27.6 (#101)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 51.7% | 81.1% |
| LMCA | 5.5% | 24% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1317 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 118.08 | — |

## Math

- Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257)
- Qwen Plus: 22.0 (#266)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| MATH Level 5 | 14.4% | 65.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 17.8% |
| LMArena Math | — | 1326 |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297)
- Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#245)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 25.3% | 48.1% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.3% | — |
| LMArena Expert | — | 1328 |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 3B: —
- Qwen Plus: 45.3 (#170)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1347 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1323 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 3B: —
- Qwen Plus: 69.0 (#176)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1303 |

## Long Context

- Ministral 3B: —
- Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#153)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1325 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 3B: —
- Qwen Plus: 52.4 (#171)

| Benchmark | Ministral 3B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1336 |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 3B better than Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 36.7 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 15× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Qwen Plus?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Qwen Plus share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.