# Mistral Small 3.1 vs Qwen3 8B

> Qwen3 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.7 to 31.7 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-1-vs-qwen3-8b
- 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 3 categories and Qwen3 8B in 2 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3 8B leads 34.9 to 14.7.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 3.9% for Mistral Small 3.1 and 56.1% for Qwen3 8B.
- Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 / $0.70 per million input/output tokens, against $0.35 / $0.56 for Mistral Small 3.1.
- Qwen3 8B accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 128K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 31.7 | 33.7 |
| Rank | 269 | 238 |
| Context | 128K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.35 | $0.18 |
| Output $/M | $0.56 | $0.70 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3.1: 38.3 (#179)
- Qwen3 8B: 34.0 (#248)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 22.6% |
| LMArena Coding | 1309 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small 3.1: —
- Qwen3 8B: 30.2 (#78)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | — | 42.6% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3.1: 19.7 (#254)
- Qwen3 8B: 16.6 (#303)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 1% | 5% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.48 | 136.17 |
| CritPt | — | 0% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1278 | — |
| DTBench | — | 59.7% |
| LMCA | — | 8.8% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3.1: 14.7 (#301)
- Qwen3 8B: 34.9 (#191)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 3.9% | 56.1% |
| Omni-MATH | 24.8% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1262 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3.1: 22.6 (#271)
- Qwen3 8B: 36.1 (#173)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 41.9% | 56.8% |
| MMLU-Pro | 61% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 4.8% |
| GPQA (HELM) | 39.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1257 | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small 3.1: 33.2 (#99)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1136 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3.1: 41.2 (#209)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| 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 8B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | 75% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1264 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3.1: 39.5 (#178)
- Qwen3 8B: 37.9 (#210)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 62.1% |
| LMArena Longer Query | 1299 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3.1: 37.0 (#259)
- Qwen3 8B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3 8B |
|---|---|---|
| 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 8B?

Qwen3 8B is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.7 to 31.7 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3.1 or Qwen3 8B?

Qwen3 8B is cheaper. It lists at $0.18 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 Qwen3 8B better for coding?

Mistral Small 3.1 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 38.3 versus 34.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3 8B does, with 131K tokens against 128K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3.1 and Qwen3 8B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3.1 has 28 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3 8B has 11.