# Mistral Small 3.1 vs Qwen2.5 7B Instruct

> Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.7 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-1-vs-qwen2-5-7b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 9

## Summary

- They share 9 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct in 1 category; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads 48.8 to 37.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is MMLU-Pro: 61% for Mistral Small 3.1 and 53.9% for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct is cheaper at $0.17 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $0.35 / $0.56 for Mistral Small 3.1.
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.7 | 29.0 |
| Rank | 269 | 320 |
| Context | 128K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.35 | $0.17 |
| Output $/M | $0.56 | $0.70 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 36.5 (#208)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | — | 37.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1309 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | — | 46.1% |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small 3.1: —
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 23.8 (#124)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | — | 7.8% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 14.8 (#322)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | 0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.48 | 118.51 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1278 | — |
| DTBench | — | 47.7% |
| LMCA | — | 6.4% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 12.6 (#306)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.9% | 2.5% |
| Omni-MATH | 24.8% | 29.4% |
| LMArena Math | 1262 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 17.0 (#286)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 41.9% | 35.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | 61% | 53.9% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.2% | 34.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1257 | — |
| MMLU | — | 72.9% |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1136 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1255 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1253 | — |
| LMArena French | 1273 | — |
| LMArena German | 1266 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1208 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1206 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1263 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1283 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3.1: 63.6 (#230)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 63.2 (#231)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 75% | 74.1% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1264 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1299 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 48.8 (#195)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| WildBench | 78.8% | 73.1% |
| LMArena Text | 1277 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1253 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 761 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1270 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 better than Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Mistral Small 3.1 is the stronger model overall, scoring 31.7 to 29.0 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.1 or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Qwen2.5 7B Instruct is cheaper. It lists at $0.17 per million input tokens and $0.70 per million output tokens; Mistral Small 3.1 lists at $0.35 and $0.56.

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.3 versus 36.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen2.5 7B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.1 and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct share?

9 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.1 has 28 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct has 15.