Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder

Comparison

As of August 25, 2026, Qwen3-Coder is 52% cheaper per million tokens than Mistral Small 4. Mistral Small 4 is $0.15 / $0.60 per million input/output tokens versus Qwen3-Coder at $0.18 / $0.18. Sources: https://docs.mistral.ai/platform/pricing/ and https://bailian.console.aliyun.com/

Sources: Mistral AI pricing (https://docs.mistral.ai/platform/pricing/); Qwen pricing (https://bailian.console.aliyun.com/)

Mistral Small 4

Mistral

$0.75blended / 1M

Input

$0.15

Output

$0.60

256K ctx|Open Source

52%

cheaper

Better value

Qwen3-Coder

Qwen

$0.36blended / 1M

Input

$0.18

Output

$0.18

256K ctx|Open Source

Save $0.39 per million tokens by choosing Qwen3-Coder over Mistral Small 4.

Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder comparison

Token pricing, specs, and benchmarks side by side

Metric

Mistral Small 4

Qwen3-Coder

Provider

Mistral

Qwen

License

Open Source

Release Date

2026-03-16

2025-01-01

Pricing (per 1M tokens)

Input Price-17%

$0.15

$0.18

Output Price+233%

$0.60

$0.18

Blended (1M + 1M)

$0.75

$0.36

Model Details

Context Window

256K

Max Output Tokens

256K

Knowledge Cutoff

N/A

Throughput

4.3 tok/s

N/A

Benchmarks

GPQA

71.2%

—

LiveCodeBench

63.6%

—

IFBench

48%

—

AA-LCR

71.2%

—

MMMU-Pro

60%

—

AIME 2025

83.8%

—

Arena-Hard

58.3%

—

Collie

62.9%

—

MMLU-Pro

78%

—

Verdict

Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder: the bottom line

Both models are closely matched on benchmarks. Qwen3-Coder has the pricing advantage, making it the better value unless Mistral Small 4's specific capabilities are critical to your workflow.

View Mistral Small 4 details View Qwen3-Coder details

Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder FAQ

Which is cheaper, Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3-Coder?

As of August 25, 2026, Qwen3-Coder is 52% cheaper on blended LLM API pricing. Qwen3-Coder costs $0.18 per million input tokens and $0.18 per million output tokens ($0.36 blended 1M-in + 1M-out). Mistral Small 4 costs $0.15 / $0.60 per million tokens ($0.75 blended). Sources: https://docs.mistral.ai/platform/pricing/ and https://bailian.console.aliyun.com/. The cheapest LLM for your app still depends on how many output tokens you generate.

How much does Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder cost per million tokens?

Mistral Small 4 Mistral API pricing is $0.15 input and $0.60 output per million tokens via Mistral AI. Qwen3-Coder Qwen API pricing is $0.18 input and $0.18 output per million tokens via Qwen. Use those four numbers, not ChatGPT Plus or Claude Pro subscription prices, when you are comparing APIs.

Which is better for coding, Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3-Coder?

Mistral Small 4 has a published LiveCodeBench score of 63.6%. Qwen3-Coder does not have that eval on this page yet.

What is the context window for Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder?

Mistral Small 4 supports a 256K token context window, while Qwen3-Coder supports 256K tokens. Both models have the same context window size. Filling a larger window bills more input tokens, so the cheaper-per-million model can still cost more on long documents.

Which model performs better on benchmarks, Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3-Coder?

Shared benchmark scores for Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3-Coder are still limited. Check the comparison table for the evals each model has published. Check the comparison table for GPQA Diamond, SWE-bench, MMLU, HLE, and the other evals we track. Token price and benchmark score together are the usual LLM comparison, not either number alone.

Is Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3-Coder better for production use?

Both Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3-Coder are production API models. For cost-sensitive production traffic, Qwen3-Coder has better economics on the blended 1M-in + 1M-out scale. For maximum capability, weight the benchmark table for your domain. Many production stacks route cheap models for drafts and a frontier model for the hard turn, which is usually cheaper than sending everything to the expensive API.

Can I switch between Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3-Coder in my app?

Yes. Call Mistral Small 4 through Mistral AI and Qwen3-Coder through Qwen with separate API keys, or through a gateway that already wraps both. Keep prompts in tokens, not characters, when you estimate the invoice. AnotherWrapper templates can swap providers without rewriting auth and billing.

How accurate is this Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder pricing data?

List rates are the latest published Mistral API pricing and Qwen API pricing, quoted per million tokens. Official rate sheets: https://docs.mistral.ai/platform/pricing/ and https://bailian.console.aliyun.com/. Prompt caching, batch APIs, and committed-use discounts can change the invoice. Benchmark scores are from official publications and independent evals, updated as new numbers land.

What is the output token limit for Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3-Coder?

Mistral Small 4 supports up to 256K output tokens per request, while Qwen3-Coder supports up to 256K output tokens. Output tokens are usually the expensive half of API pricing, so a higher max output cap is a capability, not a discount.

Which model has better throughput, Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3-Coder?

Mistral Small 4 has a measured throughput of approximately 4.3 tokens/second. Throughput data for Qwen3-Coder is not yet available. Throughput (tokens per second) and time-to-first-token are why two models with the same per-million-token price can still feel different in chat and agents.

How do I switch the models in this Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder comparison?

Use the model pickers at the top of this LLM comparison. Search any model in the index and the URL updates. Open Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3-Coder from the sidebar for the single-model API pricing page, or go back to the LLM pricing table to sort by cheapest blended cost.

Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3-Coder pricing

This comparison covers API pricing, context window, throughput, and benchmark scores. Mistral Small 4 costs $0.15/M input and $0.60/M output via Mistral AI. Qwen3-Coder costs $0.18/M input and $0.18/M output.

Rank both on the LLM leaderboard, SWE-bench, and Humanity's Last Exam.