# Mistral Small 3.1 vs Qwen3.5 Plus

> Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 31.7 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-1-vs-qwen3-5-plus
- Last updated: 2026-10-12
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.5 Plus in 4 categories; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.5 Plus leads 49.6 to 14.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 3.9% for Mistral Small 3.1 and 86.7% for Qwen3.5 Plus.
- Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper at $0.35 / $0.56 per million input/output tokens, against $0.40 / $2.40 for Qwen3.5 Plus.
- Qwen3.5 Plus accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 128K.
- Mistral Small 3.1 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.7 | 42.9 |
| Rank | 269 | 106 |
| Context | 128K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.35 | $0.40 |
| Output $/M | $0.56 | $2.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1309 | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 621.92 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small 3.1: —
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 0.54 |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 32.8 (#74)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | 22% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.48 | 146.78 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1278 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 17% |
| DTBench | — | 80.5% |
| LMCA | — | 36.4% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 49.6 (#61)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.9% | 86.7% |
| Omni-MATH | 24.8% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1262 | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 21% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 2.1% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 46.0 (#83)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 41.9% | 84.8% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 25.4% |
| MMLU-Pro | 61% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.7% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1257 | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1136 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| 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)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 75% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1264 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: 43.0 (#113)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| CL-bench | — | 19.8% |
| CL-bench Life | — | 12.4% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1299 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)
- Qwen3.5 Plus: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1277 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1253 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 761 | — |
| WildBench | 78.8% | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1270 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3.1 better than Qwen3.5 Plus?

Qwen3.5 Plus is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.9 to 31.7 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3.1 costs 2.2× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5 Plus's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.1 or Qwen3.5 Plus?

Mistral Small 3.1 is cheaper. It lists at $0.35 per million input tokens and $0.56 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 Plus lists at $0.40 and $2.40.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5 Plus does, with 1M tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.1 and Qwen3.5 Plus share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.1 has 28 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5 Plus has 15.