# Mistral Small 3 vs Qwen3.5-Flash

> Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5-Flash's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-3-vs-qwen3-5-flash
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 20

## Summary

- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small 3 scores higher in 1 category and Qwen3.5-Flash in 7 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Qwen3.5-Flash leads 58.2 to 32.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 6.7% for Mistral Small 3 and 84.4% for Qwen3.5-Flash.
- Mistral Small 3 is cheaper at $0.05 / $0.08 per million input/output tokens, against $0.10 / $0.40 for Qwen3.5-Flash.
- Qwen3.5-Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 33K.
- Mistral Small 3 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 30.9 | 42.3 |
| Rank | 268 | 105 |
| Context | 33K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.05 | $0.10 |
| Output $/M | $0.08 | $0.40 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mistral Small 3: 36.0 (#203)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 33.9 (#234)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1246 | 1412 |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1243 |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 45.3% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 50.4% | — |
| ALE-Bench | — | 221.8 |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small 3: —
- Qwen3.5-Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 462.69 |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small 3: 18.2 (#269)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 32.9 (#63)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Chess Puzzles | 0% | 21% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1233 | 1404 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 127.06 | 143.98 |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 20% |
| DTBench | — | 82.9% |
| LMCA | — | 29.1% |

## Math

- Mistral Small 3: 15.3 (#290)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 36.3 (#117)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 6.7% | 84.4% |
| LMArena Math | 1240 | 1407 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.2% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 6.2% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small 3: 25.0 (#258)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 43.2 (#84)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.3% | 82.3% |
| LMArena Expert | 1202 | 1408 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 20.3% |
| Confabulations | 25.2% | — |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | — | 10.5% |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small 3: 37.5 (#231)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 50.7 (#116)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1198 | 1385 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1204 | 1446 |
| LMArena French | 1202 | 1412 |
| LMArena German | 1211 | 1389 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1111 | 1369 |
| LMArena Korean | 1188 | 1344 |
| LMArena Russian | 1216 | 1379 |
| LMArena Spanish | — | 1399 |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small 3: 63.9 (#224)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 72.8 (#133)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1214 | 1374 |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small 3: 37.8 (#206)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 42.4 (#119)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1246 | 1392 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small 3: 32.4 (#275)
- Qwen3.5-Flash: 58.2 (#117)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small 3 | Qwen3.5-Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1234 | 1397 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1195 | 1343 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1217 | 1393 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 707 | — |

## FAQ

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

Qwen3.5-Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 42.3 to 30.9 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small 3 costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.5-Flash's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

Mistral Small 3 is cheaper. It lists at $0.05 per million input tokens and $0.08 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5-Flash lists at $0.10 and $0.40.

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

Mistral Small 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 36.0 versus 33.9 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.5-Flash does, with 1M tokens against 33K.

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

20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small 3 has 24 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.5-Flash has 32.