# Mistral Medium 3.1 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct

> Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 31.5 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Medium 3.1 costs 3.8× 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/mistral-medium-3-1-vs-qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct leads 24.7 to 10.1.
- Mistral Medium 3.1 is cheaper at $0.40 / $2 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 131K.
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.5 | 37.7 |
| Rank | 260 | 186 |
| Context | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.40 | $1.50 |
| Output $/M | $2 | $7.50 |
| Weights | Proprietary | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.2 (#199)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| SWE-bench Verified (bash only) | — | 55.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1275 |
| GSO | — | 4.9% |
| WeirdML | — | 41.2% |
| LMArena Coding | — | 1413 |
| ALE-Bench | — | 461.45 |
| AlgoTune | — | 1.44 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 23.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 27.2% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Medium 3.1: 10.1 (#336)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 24.7 (#141)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 49.5% |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 6.5% | — |
| Thematic Generalization | 20.3% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | — | 1372 |

## Math

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 34.9 (#151)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | — | 1364 |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 36.4 (#159)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | — | 1337 |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 47.8 (#143)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | — | 1345 |
| LMArena Chinese | — | 1356 |
| LMArena French | — | 1394 |
| LMArena German | — | 1324 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1309 |
| LMArena Korean | — | 1307 |
| LMArena Russian | — | 1367 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1360 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 71.8 (#142)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | — | 1356 |

## Long Context

- Mistral Medium 3.1: —
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 42.0 (#126)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | — | 1379 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Medium 3.1: 55.6 (#140)
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: 55.5 (#142)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | — | 1356 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | — | 1333 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 1476 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | — | 1365 |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Medium 3.1 better than Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the stronger model overall, scoring 37.7 to 31.5 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Medium 3.1 costs 3.8× 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, Mistral Medium 3.1 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?

Mistral Medium 3.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.40 per million input tokens and $2 per million output tokens; Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct does, with 262K tokens against 131K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.1 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.1 has 3 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct has 25.