Mistral Small 3.1 vs Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B
Which is better for the money: Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral or Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-26.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B scores 32.8 points higher (39.9 vs 7.1) but costs 95× as much to run the benchmark ($2632 vs $27.8; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B when you need intelligence above 7.1, and Mistral Small 3.1 when 7.1 is enough.
| Metric | Mistral Small 3.1 | Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 7.1 | 39.9 | +462.0% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 5.6× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $27.82 | $2,632.05 | +9361.0% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 95× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.74s | 61.67s | +474.2% Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is 474.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.08 / $0.14 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B vs Mistral Small 3.1: 462.0% more intelligence, 9361.0% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 474.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mistral Small 3.1 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
- Qwen3.8 2.4T A95B is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (High, Default Fallback) scores 53.60 for $2172.
Mistral Small 3.1Qwen3.8 2.4T A95BToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-1/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-1/qwen3-8-2-4t-a95b?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill