# Mistral Small 3 vs Qwen3.5-9B

> Qwen3.5-9B is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 2.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5-9B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-vs-qwen3-5-9b
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 4

## Summary

- They share 4 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-9B in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in knowledge, where Qwen3.5-9B leads 46.0 to 25.0.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 6.7% for Mistral Small 3 and 61.7% for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.15 for Qwen3.5-9B.
- Qwen3.5-9B accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 33K.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 33.3 |
| Rank | 268 | 235 |
| Context | 33K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.08 | $0.15 |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 35.3 (#213)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| SciCode | — | 27.5% |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small 3: —
- Qwen3.5-9B: 14.4 (#143)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Terminal-Bench | — | 9.2% |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 22.5 (#178)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 12% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.06 | 139.45 |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | — |
| DTBench | — | 71.2% |
| LMCA | — | 24.5% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 33.5 (#174)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | 61.7% |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | — | 48.5% |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
- Qwen3.5-9B: 46.0 (#77)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | 79% |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| 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)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
- Qwen3.5-9B: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-9B |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | — |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small 3 better than Qwen3.5-9B?

Qwen3.5-9B is the stronger model overall, scoring 33.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 2.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5-9B's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3.5-9B?

Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5-9B lists at $0.10 and $0.15.

### Is Mistral Small 3 or Qwen3.5-9B better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (36.0 vs 35.3); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5-9B does, with 262K tokens against 33K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small 3 and Qwen3.5-9B share?

4 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-9B has 10.