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 2026-07-17.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3 Coder Next scores 10.5 points higher (21.1 vs 10.6) but costs 1.9× as much to run the benchmark ($247 vs $128; both mid-range class). Pick Qwen3 Coder Next when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mistral Small 3.2.
| Metric | Mistral Small 3.2 | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 10.6 | 21.1 | +99.1% Qwen3 Coder Next is 99.1% more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $127.51 | $247.26 | +93.9% Qwen3 Coder Next is 93.9% more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 4.02s | 6.61s | +64.4% Qwen3 Coder Next is 64.4% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.30 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Mistral Small 3.2: 99.1% more intelligence, 93.9% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 64.4% slower 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-V2.5-Pro scores 42.20 for $98.5.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Terra (medium) scores 45.60 for $240.
Mistral Small 3.2Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierEvery other model
Matchup
Compare something else
Agents:
Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-2/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-3-2/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill