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Mistral Small vs Qwen3-32B

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Mistral Small specs · Qwen3-32B specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceMistral Small

    Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-32B does not.

  • Context windowTie

    Both ship a 128K-token context window.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Mistral Small edges ahead, winning 1 of 5 categories against Qwen3-32B's 0. Mistral Small publishes pricing ($0.60 / 1M output tokens) while Qwen3-32B does not. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Qwen3-32B is the newer of the two, released 7 months after Mistral Small, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Small is usually picked for cheapest llm and fastest llm workloads, while Qwen3-32B sees more deployments in open source llm and edge deployment. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecMistral SmallQwen3-32B
ProviderMistralAlibaba
ReleasedSep 2024Apr 2025
Modalitiestexttext
Context window128K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.20 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Output · 1M$0.60 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Apache-2.0)Yes (Apache-2.0)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day$1.50 vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$15.00 vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$33.60 vs ,

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Mistral Small$0.050
  • Qwen3-32BPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick Mistral Small if

Mistral Small fits when…

  • Apache-2.0 open-weight
  • Fast and cheap
Pick Qwen3-32B if

Qwen3-32B fits when…

  • Apache-2.0
  • Fits modest hardware budgets
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsMistral Small vs Mistral Large 2Qwen3-32B vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Mistral Small or Qwen3-32B cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Both Mistral Small and Qwen3-32B ship a 128K-token context window.
  • Is Mistral Small or Qwen3-32B better for coding?
    Both Mistral Small and Qwen3-32B are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Both ship with open weights. Mistral Small is licensed under Apache-2.0; Qwen3-32B under Apache-2.0.
  • When were Mistral Small and Qwen3-32B released?
    Mistral Small was released by Mistral on 2024-09-18. Qwen3-32B was released by Alibaba on 2025-04-29.
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