# Ministral 8B vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/ministral-8b-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 12

## Summary

- They share 12 benchmarks with published results for both. Ministral 8B scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in 9 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 36.4 to 12.5.
- Ministral 8B is cheaper at $0.10 / $0.10 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 27.8 | 37.7 |
| Rank | 321 | 186 |
| Context | 128K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.10 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $0.10 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Ministral 8B: 34.4 (#226)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1202 | 1413 |
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Ministral 8B: 16.2 (#140)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 11.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Ministral 8B: 17.7 (#279)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1191 | 1372 |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| DTBench | 45.7% | — |

## Math

- Ministral 8B: 23.7 (#262)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1188 | 1364 |
| MATH Level 5 | 14.9% | — |

## Knowledge

- Ministral 8B: 12.5 (#292)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1170 | 1337 |
| GPQA Diamond | 27.1% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 7.4% | — |

## Multilingual

- Ministral 8B: 35.3 (#242)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1165 | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1193 | 1356 |
| LMArena Russian | 1195 | 1367 |
| LMArena French | — | 1394 |
| LMArena German | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1307 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- Ministral 8B: 60.7 (#245)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1161 | 1356 |

## Long Context

- Ministral 8B: 36.7 (#222)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1212 | 1379 |

## Writing & Preference

- Ministral 8B: 39.8 (#241)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

| Benchmark | Ministral 8B | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1191 | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1175 | 1333 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1166 | 1365 |

## FAQ

### Is Ministral 8B better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 27.8 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 8B costs 30× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Ministral 8B or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Ministral 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.10 per million input tokens and $0.10 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is Ministral 8B or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct better for coding?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.2 versus 34.4 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Ministral 8B and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

12 benchmarks have published results for both models. Ministral 8B has 17 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.