# Ministral 8B vs Qwen Plus

> Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.0× 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-8b-vs-qwen-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 15

## Summary

- They share 15 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 1 category and Qwen Plus in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen Plus leads 27.4 to 12.6.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MATH Level 5: 14.9% for Ministral 8B and 65.3% for Qwen Plus.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.15 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $1.20 for Qwen Plus.
- Qwen Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Ministral 8B has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 28.2 | 37.1 |
| Rank | 325 | 210 |
| Context | 262K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.15 | $1.20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Ministral 8B: 35.0 (#230)
- Qwen Plus: 38.9 (#167)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1328 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 8B: 16.4 (#148)
- Qwen Plus: —

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 8B: 18.4 (#281)
- Qwen Plus: 28.4 (#107)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1317 |
| DTBench | 45.7% | 81.1% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 63.3% |
| LMCA | — | 24% |

## Math

- Ministral 8B: 25.7 (#267)
- Qwen Plus: 23.3 (#271)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1326 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | 65.3% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 17.8% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 1.7% |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 8B: 12.6 (#297)
- Qwen Plus: 27.4 (#251)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | 48.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1328 |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 8B: 35.1 (#247)
- Qwen Plus: 45.1 (#175)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1310 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1347 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1323 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1251 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 8B: 60.5 (#250)
- Qwen Plus: 68.8 (#181)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1303 |

## Long Context

- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#227)
- Qwen Plus: 40.3 (#158)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1324 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 8B: 39.6 (#246)
- Qwen Plus: 52.2 (#176)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1326 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1293 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1336 |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen Plus?

Qwen Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.1 to 28.2 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 4.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen Plus?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.15 per million output tokens; Qwen Plus lists at $0.40 and $1.20.

### Is Ministral 8B or Qwen Plus better for coding?

Qwen Plus scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.9 versus 35.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen Plus does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen Plus share?

15 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen Plus has 20.