Compare / Qwen3.5-2B vs Mistral Small 3
Qwen3.5-2B vs Mistral Small 3
Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 9 results on 2 sources that measured both models.
Results as of 8 October 2026 (catalogue release 2026-10-08-4199ce0620fe).
Qwen3.5-2B or Mistral Small 3? The short answer
They score and cost about the same: pick on the results below that match your work.
- They score about the same on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (6.9 and 6.7).
- Qwen3.5-2B is newer: released 2 Mar 2026, against 30 Jan 2025 for Mistral Small 3.
- On third-party benchmarks, on the results both models have: Qwen3.5-2B does better for reasoning and knowledge; Mistral Small 3 for writing.
At a glance
| Qwen3.5-2B | Mistral Small 3 | |
|---|---|---|
| Price per million tokens | Not on sale | $0.050 in · $0.080 out |
| Blended (3 in : 1 out) | – | $0.058 |
| Cheapest host, blended | – | – |
| Intelligence Index | 6.9 | 6.7 |
| Spring Prompt overall | – | – |
| Output speed, tokens a second | – | – |
| Context window | – | 32,768 tokens |
| Released | 2 Mar 2026 (newer) | 30 Jan 2025 |
| Weights | Closed | Open |
| Developer based in | China | France |
Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.
Which is better for what
Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.
| Use case | Qwen3.5-2B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls | 162 of 165 | not measured |
| Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge | 172 of 199 | 193 of 198 |
| WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality | 156 of 189 | 156 of 188 |
| Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers | not measured | 9 of 152 |
Every shared result
Each model's best result on every measure both have, grouped by benchmark, with the setting that produced it. The headline measures of each benchmark come first; the rest are under "Show all". Green marks the better value; where a source reports ranges that overlap, neither is marked.
| Measure | Qwen3.5-2B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results | ||
| Artificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score, higher is better | 6.9thinking reasoning | 6.7 |
| GPQA Diamond% of questions, higher is better | 45.6%thinking reasoning | 46.2% |
| Humanity's Last Exam% of questions, higher is better | 5.0%no reasoning | 3.8% |
| UGI Leaderboard reported by UGI Leaderboard · 3 results | ||
| Writing score · UGIscore out of 100, higher is better | 29.0no reasoning | 33.9 |
| Requested-length error · UGI% off the requested word count, lower is better | 16.0%no reasoning | 8.0% |
| Style adherence · UGIscore from 0 to 1, higher is better | 0.33think-prefill reasoning | 0.35 |
Show all 9 results (3 more)
| Measure | Qwen3.5-2B | Mistral Small 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Artificial Analysis reported by Artificial Analysis · 3 results | ||
| IFBench% of instructions, higher is better | 31.5%thinking reasoning | 26.4% |
| Long-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions, higher is better | 21.0%thinking reasoning | 0.0% |
| τ²-bench telecom% of tasks, higher is better | 81.6%no reasoning | 19.6% |
Quick answers
Is Qwen3.5-2B better than Mistral Small 3?
They score and cost about the same: pick on the results below that match your work.
Run Qwen3.5-2B and Mistral Small 3 on your own prompt
Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.