Pairwise benchmark snapshot · Aug 16, 2026noindex (thin pair)

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 vs Qwen 3 Max benchmark

Name: Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 vs Qwen 3 Max AI benchmark comparison
Creator: CompareLLM
License: https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/

This page compares Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 (Mistral) and Qwen 3 Max (Alibaba) using the latest snapshots we have as of Aug 16, 2026. Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 wins on output price at $0.1/1M. Qwen 3 Max has the larger context window (262k tokens). Every cell below is a dated snapshot from a named public source — we do not invent missing scores, and we do not run SWE-bench ourselves.

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Mistral

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Auto-discovered from OpenRouter (mistralai/ministral-3b-2512). Preview until a second source matches.

$0.09999999999999999/1M out

Alibaba

Qwen 3 Max

Alibaba flagship. Strong math and multilingual code.

Elo 1,518$3.9/1M out

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Model A

Model B

Quick vs:vs Claude Opus 4.5 vs Claude Opus 4.6 vs Claude Sonnet 4.5 vs Claude 3.7 Sonnet

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 (2)vsQwen 3 Max (8)

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 2W (20%)Overall: Qwen 3 MaxQwen 3 Max: 8W (80%)

← Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512Qwen 3 Max →

Qwen 3 Max (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

—vs1,518

Coding Elo

—vs1,526

SWE-bench

—vs67.8%

LiveBench

—vs69.4%

GPQA Diamond

—vs83.1%

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 0WQwen 3 Max: 5W

Qwen 3 Max (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

—vs80 tok/s

Time to first token

—vs280 ms

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 0WQwen 3 Max: 2W

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$0.1/1Mvs$3.9/1M

Input price

$0.1/1Mvs$0.78/1M

Context window

131kvs262k

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 2WQwen 3 Max: 1W

Capability Matchup Radar

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

Each spoke is a skill. Farther from the center is better (0–100th percentile). Tap any dot to inspect details.

Tap any node to inspect

Percentile 0–100

Dimensional AdvantageQwen 3 Max 5/6

Preference Elo

No shared data

Throughput Speed

No shared data

Price Efficiency

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

$3.80/1M cheaper

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

—

Elo

High is better

—

EloHigh is better

1,518

Code Elo

High is better

—

Code EloHigh is better

1,526

LiveBench

High is better

—

LiveBenchHigh is better

69.4%

SWE-bench

High is better

—

SWE-benchHigh is better

67.8%

GPQA

High is better

—

GPQAHigh is better

83.1%

TTFT

Low is better

—

TTFTLow is better

280 ms

Speed

High is better

—

SpeedHigh is better

80 tok/s

In $

Low is better

+680%$0.1/1M

In $Low is better

$0.78/1M

Out $

Low is better

+3800%$0.1/1M

Out $Low is better

$3.9/1M

Context

High is better

131k

ContextHigh is better

262k+100%

Interactive Simulator

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Simulate monthly production API costs based on published $/1M tokens.

Save up to 94% with Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Monthly Volume50M tokens/mo

Quick Presets:

Token Ratio (In vs Out)70% In / 30% Out

RAG / Search (10% out)Coding / Chat (50% out)

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512$5.00 / mo

In: $3.50Out: $1.50

Qwen 3 Max$85.80 / mo

In: $27.30Out: $58.50

Estimated Cost Delta

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 is estimated to save $80.80/month ($970/year).

Based on 50M tokens (30% gen)

Key Selection Recommendations

1
Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512:Pick Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 when you are optimizing output cost.

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsinsufficient data

Need SWE-bench on both sides.

High-volume chatMistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Lower output list price ($0.1/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIinsufficient data

Need TTFT on both sides.

Long-document RAGQwen 3 Max

Larger window (262k).

Screenshots / visionQwen 3 Max

Qwen 3 Max is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	insufficient data	Need SWE-bench on both sides.
High-volume chat	Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512	Lower output list price ($0.1/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	insufficient data	Need TTFT on both sides.
Long-document RAG	Qwen 3 Max	Larger window (262k).
Screenshots / vision	Qwen 3 Max	Qwen 3 Max is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Related Editorial Dispatches & Benchmark Notes

View all news

launchApr 18, 2026

Qwen 3 Max: Alibaba’s flagship for math and multilingual code

Closed flagship. Strong math. Compare to Sol and Opus on GPQA and SWE-bench, not on brand heat.

launchSep 20, 2025

Qwen3 235B: the open MoE Qwen, not the Max SKU

Sep 2025 open-weight mixture-of-experts. Self-host path. Don’t confuse it with Qwen 3 Max.

Community Sentiment

Cast Your Matchup Vote

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Community Discussions (0)

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LIVE

Mistral

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Elo n/a

LiveBench—

SWE-bench—

Speed—

Output cost$0.1/1M

Alibaba

Qwen 3 Max

Elo 1,518

LiveBench69.4%

SWE-bench67.8%

Speed80 tok/s

Output cost$3.9/1M

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 or Qwen 3 Max?: We do not have preference Elo for both models, so we do not declare an overall winner. Compare the metrics that exist.
Which is better at coding, Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 or Qwen 3 Max?: SWE-bench is missing for at least one model, so we do not rank coding from a single number.
Which is cheaper to run in production?: Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 output tokens are $0.1/1M versus $3.9/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.
Which is faster, Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 or Qwen 3 Max?: We do not have TTFT for both models.
Which has the larger context window?: Qwen 3 Max accepts 262k tokens versus 131k.
Can I self-host either model?: Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.
Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?: No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.
What does preference Elo mean on this page?: Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 and Qwen 3 Max Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

All Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 matchups →|All Qwen 3 Max matchups →

Qwen 3 Max vs Qwen QwQ 32B (previous qwen)Qwen 3 Max vs Qwen3.8 27B (next qwen)Mistral Large 3 vs Qwen 3 Max Qwen 2.5 Plus vs Qwen 3 Max Codestral 25.01 vs Qwen 3 Max Claude Opus 4.5 vs Qwen 3 Max

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 vs Qwen 3 Max benchmark

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Matchup Breakdown

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Category wins across intelligence, speed, and pricing efficiency.

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 (2)vsQwen 3 Max (8)

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 2W (20%)Overall: Qwen 3 MaxQwen 3 Max: 8W (80%)

← Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512Qwen 3 Max →

Qwen 3 Max (5/5)

Intelligence & Reasoning

Preference Elo, Coding proficiency, SWE-bench & LiveBench accuracy

Preference Elo

—vs1,518

Coding Elo

—vs1,526

SWE-bench

—vs67.8%

LiveBench

—vs69.4%

GPQA Diamond

—vs83.1%

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 0WQwen 3 Max: 5W

Qwen 3 Max (2/2)

Speed & Latency

Generation throughput and time to first token responsiveness

Output speed

—vs80 tok/s

Time to first token

—vs280 ms

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 0WQwen 3 Max: 2W

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 (2/3)

Pricing & Capacity

Cost per million tokens and max context window length

Output price

$0.1/1Mvs$3.9/1M

Input price

$0.1/1Mvs$0.78/1M

Context window

131kvs262k

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512: 2WQwen 3 Max: 1W

Recommended Workload Routing

Repo / coding agentsinsufficient data

Need SWE-bench on both sides.

High-volume chatMistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Lower output list price ($0.1/1M).

Voice / low-latency UIinsufficient data

Need TTFT on both sides.

Long-document RAGQwen 3 Max

Larger window (262k).

Screenshots / visionQwen 3 Max

Qwen 3 Max is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Target Workload	Recommended Pick	Evaluation Rationale
Repo / coding agents	insufficient data	Need SWE-bench on both sides.
High-volume chat	Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512	Lower output list price ($0.1/1M).
Voice / low-latency UI	insufficient data	Need TTFT on both sides.
Long-document RAG	Qwen 3 Max	Larger window (262k).
Screenshots / vision	Qwen 3 Max	Qwen 3 Max is the side marked multimodal in the catalog.

Frequently Asked Questions

Which is better overall, Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 or Qwen 3 Max?

We do not have preference Elo for both models, so we do not declare an overall winner. Compare the metrics that exist.

Which is better at coding, Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 or Qwen 3 Max?

SWE-bench is missing for at least one model, so we do not rank coding from a single number.

Which is cheaper to run in production?

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 output tokens are $0.1/1M versus $3.9/1M. Input prices and retry rates still move the real bill.

Which is faster, Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 or Qwen 3 Max?

We do not have TTFT for both models.

Which has the larger context window?

Qwen 3 Max accepts 262k tokens versus 131k.

Can I self-host either model?

Neither model is marked open-weights here. You are comparing hosted APIs.

Are these scores from CompareLLM’s own evals?

No. V1 aggregates public leaderboards (and optional first-party latency pings). Each cell names its source and date. Read /methodology.

What does preference Elo mean on this page?

Preference Elo is a crowd vote from LMArena / Arena. People see two hidden answers and pick the one they like more. The model that wins more often gets a higher Elo. That means people preferred it — not that it passed a school test. It is not SWE-bench, not accuracy, and not a number we invent. Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512 and Qwen 3 Max Elo cells are dated snapshots from the named source — we do not compute Arena ourselves.

Swap or Add Any Model to this Matchup

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Intelligence & Reasoning

Speed & Latency

Pricing & Capacity

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

No shared data

No shared data

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Key Selection Recommendations

Recommended Workload Routing

Related Editorial Dispatches & Benchmark Notes

Qwen 3 Max: Alibaba’s flagship for math and multilingual code

Qwen3 235B: the open MoE Qwen, not the Max SKU

Cast Your Matchup Vote

Community Discussions (0)

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CompareLLM Matrix

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Qwen 3 Max

Frequently Asked Questions

Related news

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons

Swap or Add Any Model to this Matchup

Interactive Comparison Diagram

Tug-of-War Matchup Matrix

Intelligence & Reasoning

Speed & Latency

Pricing & Capacity

Multi-Dimensional Capability Radar

No shared data

No shared data

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Full Benchmark Score Matrix

Workload Cost & Savings Calculator

Key Selection Recommendations

Recommended Workload Routing

Related Editorial Dispatches & Benchmark Notes

Qwen 3 Max: Alibaba’s flagship for math and multilingual code

Qwen3 235B: the open MoE Qwen, not the Max SKU

Cast Your Matchup Vote

Community Discussions (0)

Share card

CompareLLM Matrix

Mistral: Ministral 3 3B 2512

Qwen 3 Max

Frequently Asked Questions

Related news

Similar Head-to-Head Comparisons