AI model comparison

Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B

Pricing, context window, benchmarks, and features compared side by side. Or skip the guesswork and send one prompt to both.

Mistral Small 4 is the next major release in the Mistral Small family, unifying the capabilities of several flagship Mistral models into a single system.

Input / 1M
$0.15
Output / 1M
$0.60
Context
262K

Qwen3-Coder-480B-A35B-Instruct is a Mixture-of-Experts (MoE) code generation model developed by the Qwen team.

Input / 1M
$0.30
Output / 1M
$1
Context
262K

At a glance

Quick verdict

How the two models stack up on the things people ask about most.

Lower price

mistralai logo

Mistral Small 4

1.8x cheaper for a typical chat

Higher intelligence score

qwen logo

Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B

11.9 vs 11.3 on Artificial Analysis

Larger context window

Tie

262K vs 262K tokens

Newer release

mistralai logo

Mistral Small 4

Released March 16, 2026

Benchmarks

Benchmark scores

Independent scores from Artificial Analysis. Higher is better.

Intelligence index

mistralai logoMistral Small 411.3
qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B11.9

Coding index

mistralai logoMistral Small 426.6
qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35BNot available

Agentic index

mistralai logoMistral Small 40.8
qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35BNot available

Pricing

Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B API pricing

Per-token API rates. Cheaper option highlighted.

Metricmistralai logoMistral Small 4qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B
Input tokensPer 1M tokens$0.15$0.30
Output tokensPer 1M tokens$0.60$1
Cached input (read)Per 1M tokens$0.02$0.10
Cache writePer 1M tokensNot availableNot available

What it costs in practice

Estimated cost per 1,000 requests at standard rates. Coding and long-document figures also show the cost when the input is already cached.

Chat message

2K in, 500 out

mistralai logoMistral Small 4$0.60
qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B$1.10

Coding task

30K in, 4K out

mistralai logoMistral Small 4$6.90$2.85 cached
qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B$13$7 cached

Long document summary

150K in, 2K out

mistralai logoMistral Small 4$23.70$3.45 cached
qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B$47$17 cached

Specs

Context window and capabilities

How much each model can read, how much it can write, and what it accepts as input.

Metricmistralai logoMistral Small 4qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B
Context window262K tokens262K tokens
Max output210K tokens66K tokens
Input typesImage, TextText
Output typesTextText
Reasoning effort levelsHigh, NoneNot available
Default reasoning effortHighNot available
Release dateMarch 16, 2026July 23, 2025

Features

Supported features

API features available for each model.

Metricmistralai logoMistral Small 4qwen logoQwen3 Coder 480B A35B
Tool callingSupportedSupported
Structured outputsSupportedSupported
JSON modeSupportedSupported
ReasoningSupportedNot supported
TemperatureSupportedSupported
Stop sequencesSupportedSupported
Deterministic seedSupportedSupported
Verbosity controlNot supportedNot supported

Our take

Mistral Small 4 is 1.8x cheaper for a typical chat. Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (11.9 vs 11.3). The right pick depends on your workload, so the quickest way to settle it is to send the same prompt to both and compare.

FAQ

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B cheaper?

Mistral Small 4 is cheaper for a typical chat (2K input tokens and 500 output tokens). Mistral Small 4 costs $0.15 per 1M input tokens and $0.60 per 1M output tokens, while Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B costs $0.30 per 1M input tokens and $1 per 1M output tokens.

Which has a bigger context window, Mistral Small 4 or Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B?

Mistral Small 4 supports up to 262K tokens of context, compared with 262K for Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B.

Is Mistral Small 4 smarter than Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B?

On the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index, Mistral Small 4 scores 11.3 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B scores 11.9, putting Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B ahead. Benchmarks don't capture everything, so the best test is running your own prompts through both.

Can I use Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B at the same time?

Yes. Shortcut Chat sends one prompt to multiple models at once, so you can see Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B answer side by side and keep the better response.

mistralai logoqwen logo

Why choose? Ask both.

Send one prompt to Mistral Small 4 and Qwen3 Coder 480B A35B at the same time. Compare the answers side by side and keep the best one.