# Mistral Small 3 vs Qwen2.5 7B Instruct

> Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 28.6 on the Noometry Index.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-vs-qwen2-5-7b-instruct
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 6

## Summary

- They share 6 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 5 categories and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct in 1 category; 4 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen2.5 7B Instruct leads 48.8 to 32.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is GPQA Diamond: 47.3% for Mistral Small 3 and 35.5% for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.17 / $0.70 for Qwen2.5 7B Instruct.
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct accepts more context: 131K tokens versus 33K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 28.6 |
| Rank | 268 | 314 |
| Context | 33K | 131K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.17 |
| Output $/M | $0.08 | $0.70 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 35.9 (#204)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | 37.6% |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | 46.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small 3: —
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 23.5 (#117)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| BALROG | — | 7.8% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 14.3 (#317)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 0% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.06 | 118.44 |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | — |
| DTBench | — | 47.7% |
| LMCA | — | 6.4% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 11.8 (#300)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | 2.5% |
| Omni-MATH | — | 29.4% |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 17.0 (#281)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | 35.5% |
| MMLU-Pro | — | 53.9% |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| GPQA (HELM) | — | 34.1% |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | — |
| MMLU | — | 72.9% |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | — |
| LMArena French | 1202 | — |
| LMArena German | 1211 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 63.4 (#226)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| IFEval | — | 74.1% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
- Qwen2.5 7B Instruct: 48.8 (#194)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen2.5 7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
| WildBench | — | 73.1% |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3 better than Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Mistral Small 3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 30.9 to 28.6 on the Noometry Index.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct?

Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Qwen2.5 7B Instruct lists at $0.17 and $0.70.

### Is Mistral Small 3 or Qwen2.5 7B Instruct better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (36.0 vs 35.9); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen2.5 7B Instruct does, with 131K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct share?

6 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen2.5 7B Instruct has 15.