Ministral 3 8B vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Ministral 3 8B by Mistral or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3 Coder Next scores 3.7 points higher (9.2 vs 5.5) but costs 15× as much to run the benchmark ($405 vs $27.5; mid-range vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3 Coder Next when you need intelligence above 5.5, and Ministral 3 8B when 5.5 is enough.
| Metric | Ministral 3 8B | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 5.5 | 9.2 | +67.3% Qwen3 Coder Next is 67.3% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $27.47 | $405.10 | +1374.7% Qwen3 Coder Next is 15× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 5.11s | 6.20s | +21.3% Qwen3 Coder Next is 21.3% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.15 / $0.15 | $0.31 / $1.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Ministral 3 8B: 67.3% more intelligence, 1374.7% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 21.3% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Ministral 3 8B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Ministral 3 8BQwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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