Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) vs Qwen3.8 Max (0902)
Which is better for the money: Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) by Mistral or Qwen3.8 Max (0902) by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) scores 34.1 points higher (45.4 vs 11.3) but costs 116× as much to run the benchmark ($4935 vs $42.5; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Qwen3.8 Max (0902) when you need intelligence above 11.3, and Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) when 11.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) | Qwen3.8 Max (0902) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 11.3 | 45.4 | +301.8% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 4.0× more intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $42.50 | $4,934.79 | +11511.3% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 116× more expensive |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 14.50s | 63.23s | +336.1% Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is 336.1% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.15 / $0.60 | $2.00 / $6.00 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Qwen3.8 Max (0902) vs Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning): 301.8% more intelligence, 11511.3% more cost to run the AA benchmark, and 336.1% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
- Qwen3.8 Max (0902) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
Mistral Small 4 (Reasoning)Qwen3.8 Max (0902)Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights 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-4/qwen3-8-max · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-small-4/qwen3-8-max?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill