Mistral Small 3.2 vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Mistral Small 3.2 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 2.2 points higher (9.2 vs 7.0) but costs 3.3× as much to run the benchmark ($405 vs $122; both mid-range class). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3 Coder Next when you need intelligence above 7.0, and Mistral Small 3.2 when 7.0 is enough.
| Metric | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 7.0 | 9.2 | +31.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 31.4% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $121.78 | $405.10 | +232.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 3.3× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 12.54s | 6.22s | −50.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 50.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.07 / $0.20 | $0.31 / $1.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Mistral Small 3.2: 31.4% more intelligence, 232.6% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 50.4% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mistral Small 3.2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Medium) scores 47.80 for $361.
Mistral Small 3.2Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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