# Mistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Flash

> Qwen3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Flash's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-vs-qwen3-6-flash
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 5

## Summary

- They share 5 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Flash in 3 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Flash leads 39.0 to 16.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 5.8% for Mistral Small and 84.4% for Qwen3.6 Flash.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $0.19 / $1.13 for Qwen3.6 Flash.
- Qwen3.6 Flash accepts more context: 1M tokens versus 262K.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.4 | 38.8 |
| Rank | 243 | 182 |
| Context | 262K | 1M |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $0.19 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $1.13 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mistral Small: 34.0 (#247)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | 326.4 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| LMArena Coding | 1362 | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small: 28.1 (#93)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small: 19.8 (#250)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: 29.0 (#96)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| DTBench | 70.9% | 77.1% |
| LMCA | 20.6% | 31% |
| SimpleBench | — | 35.2% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1335 | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 18% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 143.26 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |

## Math

- Mistral Small: 16.4 (#293)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: 39.0 (#117)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 84.4% |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 22.5% |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 10.3% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 0% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small: 31.0 (#222)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: 42.1 (#100)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 83.3% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.9% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| LMArena Expert | 1291 | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#96)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1142 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small: 45.5 (#169)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1340 | — |
| LMArena French | 1337 | — |
| LMArena German | 1340 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1259 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small: 66.4 (#209)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#156)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small: 52.5 (#171)
- Qwen3.6 Flash: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Flash |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1305 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | — |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Flash?

Qwen3.6 Flash is the stronger model overall, scoring 38.8 to 33.4 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Flash's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Flash?

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Flash lists at $0.19 and $1.13.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Flash does, with 1M tokens against 262K.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Small and Qwen3.6 Flash share?

5 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Flash has 13.