Compare / Qwen3 Max vs Mistral Small 3.1 24B

Qwen3 Max vs Mistral Small 3.1 24B

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 16 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Qwen3 Max
Alibaba · profile
Mistral Small 3.1 24B
Mistral · profile
Results compared
16
Shared sources
3

Qwen3 Max or Mistral Small 3.1 24B? The short answer

  • Mistral Small 3.1 24B is cheaper: $0.40 against $1.56 per million tokens, 3.9 times less.
  • Qwen3 Max scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 15.6 against 7.1.
  • On our business benchmarks, Qwen3 Max ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing.
  • On our business benchmarks, Mistral Small 3.1 24B ranks higher for agents and tool use.

At a glance

Qwen3 MaxMistral Small 3.1 24B
Price per million tokens$0.78 in · $3.90 out$0.35 in · $0.56 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$1.56$0.40
Cheapest host, blended––
Intelligence Index15.67.1
Spring Prompt overall––
Output speed, tokens a second––
Context window262,144 tokens128,000 tokens
WeightsClosedOpen
Developer based inChinaFrance

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 caseQwen3 MaxMistral Small 3.1 24B
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 151 of 161 114 of 161
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 117 of 195 172 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 96 of 187 157 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 50 of 153 not measured

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricQwen3 MaxMistral Small 3.1 24B
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4191,297
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3931,270
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4181,302
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,4131,294
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4231,303
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,4051,290
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 15.67.10
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 76.4%45.4%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 11.9%4.3%
Artificial AnalysisreportedIFBench% of instructions 44.1%29.9%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 50.0%22.3%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench Hard% of tasks 20.5%7.6%
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ²-bench telecom% of tasks 74.3%25.1%
UGI LeaderboardreportedRequested-length error% off the requested word count 23.0%11.0%
UGI LeaderboardreportedStyle adherencescore from 0 to 1 0.330.35
UGI LeaderboardreportedWriting scorescore out of 100 38.632.1

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Qwen3 Max better than Mistral Small 3.1 24B?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Qwen3 Max ranks higher for reasoning and knowledge and writing; Mistral Small 3.1 24B ranks higher for agents and tool use.

Which is cheaper, Qwen3 Max or Mistral Small 3.1 24B?

Mistral Small 3.1 24B costs $0.40 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $1.56 for Qwen3 Max.

Run Qwen3 Max and Mistral Small 3.1 24B on your own prompt

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