# Mistral Small vs Qwen3.6 Max Preview

> Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.1 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-small-vs-qwen3-6-max-preview
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 18

## Summary

- They share 18 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Small scores higher in 0 categories and Qwen3.6 Max Preview in 8 categories; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in math, where Qwen3.6 Max Preview leads 52.2 to 15.4.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025: 5.8% for Mistral Small and 91.1% for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Mistral Small is cheaper at $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens, against $1.30 / $7.80 for Qwen3.6 Max Preview.
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 256K.
- Mistral Small has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba (Qwen) |
| Noometry Index | 33.1 | 51.1 |
| Rank | 238 | 36 |
| Context | 256K | 262K |
| Input $/M | $0.15 | $1.30 |
| Output $/M | $0.60 | $7.80 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mistral Small: 33.5 (#242)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 48.6 (#50)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1363 | 1472 |
| SWE-bench Verified | — | 76.7% |
| LMArena WebDev | — | 1482 |
| SciCode | 26.5% | — |
| BigCodeBench Instruct | 36.1% | — |
| LiveBench Coding | 36.2% | — |
| BigCodeBench Complete | 46.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 497.62 | — |

## Agentic & Tool Use

- Mistral Small: 27.9 (#87)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| Berkeley Function Calling Leaderboard | 37.1% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | — | 4,254 |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Small: 19.3 (#238)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 40.8 (#47)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1336 | 1457 |
| DTBench | 70.9% | 87.2% |
| LMCA | 20.6% | 42.5% |
| SimpleBench | — | 63% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 37.8% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | — | 74.1% |
| CritPt | 0% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 20% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | 44.8% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 19% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | 53.7% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | — | 149.27 |
| LiveBench | 44% | — |

## Math

- Mistral Small: 15.4 (#287)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 52.2 (#40)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 5.8% | 91.1% |
| LMArena Math | 1341 | 1465 |
| LiveBench Math | 39.9% | — |
| MATH Level 5 | 46.8% | — |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 23.1% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Small: 30.9 (#214)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 57.6 (#35)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | 47.5% | 87.4% |
| LMArena Expert | 1293 | 1476 |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 52% |
| Vectara Hallucination Rate | 5.1% | — |
| MMLU | 68.7% | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Small: 32.9 (#91)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: —

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

## Multilingual

- Mistral Small: 45.7 (#164)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 54.3 (#46)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1315 | 1436 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1342 | 1487 |
| LMArena French | 1337 | 1449 |
| LMArena Russian | 1324 | 1444 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1346 | 1452 |
| LMArena German | 1341 | — |
| LMArena Japanese | 1275 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1260 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Small: 66.6 (#204)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 75.8 (#51)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1310 | 1437 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | 63.7% | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Small: 40.4 (#151)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 44.6 (#59)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1327 | 1457 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Small: 52.6 (#165)
- Qwen3.6 Max Preview: 64.0 (#58)

| Benchmark | Mistral Small | Qwen3.6 Max Preview |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1338 | 1447 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1304 | 1435 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1344 | 1456 |
| LiveBench Language | 30.5% | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Small better than Qwen3.6 Max Preview?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview is the stronger model overall, scoring 51.1 to 33.1 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Small costs 11× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Qwen3.6 Max Preview's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

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

Mistral Small is cheaper. It lists at $0.15 per million input tokens and $0.60 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Max Preview lists at $1.30 and $7.80.

### Is Mistral Small or Qwen3.6 Max Preview better for coding?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview scores higher on coding benchmarks: 48.6 versus 33.5 in the Noometry coding category.

### Which has the bigger context window?

Qwen3.6 Max Preview does, with 262K tokens against 256K.

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

18 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Small has 39 scored results on Noometry and Qwen3.6 Max Preview has 29.