The AI arena is free today

Open Superagent

Ministral 8B Instruct vs Qwen3.8 Flash

Qwen3.8 Flash leads the LLM Stats Score 49.6 to -4.5. Ministral 8B Instruct is 2.3x cheaper per token.

Mistral AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026

Which is better?

Qwen3.8 Flash leads the overall LLM Stats Score 49.6 to -4.5, ranking #17 overall.

On price, Ministral 8B Instruct is roughly 2.3x cheaper per token on a blended 3:1 input/output basis, which adds up quickly at production volume.

Qwen3.8 Flash also accepts a larger context window (1,000,000 input tokens), making it the stronger choice for long documents and large codebases.

Based on current LLM Stats indexes, shared benchmarks, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.

Choose Ministral 8B Instruct

  • cost matters — it's about 2.3x cheaper per token
  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Choose Qwen3.8 Flash

  • overall performance matters — it scores 49.6 and ranks #17 on LLM Stats
  • your work emphasizes reasoning and coding — it leads those capability indexes
  • you process long inputs — it offers a 1,000,000 token context window
  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Aug 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Ministral 8B Instruct
Mistral AI
Qwen3.8 Flash
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Core performance indexes
LLM Stats Score
-4.5
#335
49.6
#17
Reasoning
-4.5
#327
49.2
#17
Coding
-14.4
#254
36.6
#21
Cost, coverage & limits
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.10 / M
$0.15 / M
Output price
$0.10 / M
$0.47 / M
Context window
128,000
1,000,000

Capability indexes

Additional strengths measured across groups of related public benchmarks

1 shared
Index
Ministral 8B Instruct
Qwen3.8 Flash
Math
-3.7#306
32.5#56
Conservative TrueSkill rating · higher is betterHow scores work

Individual benchmarks

11 reported for Ministral 8B Instruct · 22 for Qwen3.8 Flash

No common benchmarks found

Ministral 8B Instruct and Qwen3.8 Flashdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.

Human preference

Blind head-to-head votes and playground preference scores

Pricing Analysis

Price comparison per million tokens

Ministral 8B Instruct costs less

For input processing, Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens) is 1.5x cheaper than Qwen3.8 Flash ($0.15/1M tokens).

For output processing, Ministral 8B Instruct ($0.10/1M tokens) is 4.7x cheaper than Qwen3.8 Flash ($0.47/1M tokens).

In conclusion, Qwen3.8 Flash is more expensive than Ministral 8B Instruct.*

* Using a 3:1 ratio of input to output tokens

Lowest available price from all providers
Wed Sep 02 2026 • llm-stats.com
Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input tokens$0.10
Output tokens$0.10
Best providerMistral
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.8 Flash
Input tokens$0.15
Output tokens$0.47
Best providerNovita
Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue→

Model Size

Parameter count comparison

117.0B diff

Qwen3.8 Flash has 117.0B more parameters than Ministral 8B Instruct, making it 1458.6% larger.

Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
8.0Bparameters
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.8 Flash
125.0Bparameters
8.0B
Ministral 8B Instruct
125.0B
Qwen3.8 Flash

Context Window

Maximum input and output token capacity

Qwen3.8 Flash accepts 1,000,000 input tokens compared to Ministral 8B Instruct's 128,000 tokens. Qwen3.8 Flash can generate longer responses up to 131,072 tokens, while Ministral 8B Instruct is limited to 128,000 tokens.

Mistral AI
Ministral 8B Instruct
Input128,000 tokens
Output128,000 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen3.8 Flash
Input1,000,000 tokens
Output131,072 tokens
Wed Sep 02 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen3.8 Flash supports multimodal inputs, whereas Ministral 8B Instruct does not.

Qwen3.8 Flash can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Ministral 8B Instruct

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen3.8 Flash

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Ministral 8B Instruct is licensed under Mistral Research License, while Qwen3.8 Flash uses a proprietary license.

License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.

Ministral 8B Instruct

Mistral Research License

Open weights

Qwen3.8 Flash

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Ministral 8B Instruct was released on 2024-10-16, while Qwen3.8 Flash was released on 2026-08-26.

Qwen3.8 Flash is 23 months newer than Ministral 8B Instruct.

Ministral 8B Instruct

Oct 16, 2024

1.9 years ago

Qwen3.8 Flash

Aug 26, 2026

1 weeks ago

1.9yr newer

Knowledge Cutoff

When training data ends

Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.

Unable to compare the recency of their training data.

No cutoff dates available

Provider Availability

Ministral 8B Instruct is available from Mistral AI. Qwen3.8 Flash is available from Novita.

Ministral 8B Instruct

mistral logo
Mistral
Input Price:Input: $0.10/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.10/1M

Qwen3.8 Flash

novita logo
Novita
Input Price:Input: $0.15/1MOutput Price:Output: $0.47/1M
* Prices shown are per million tokens

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?Start an Issue discussion→

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Ministral 8B Instruct and Qwen3.8 Flash side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Ministral 8B Instruct
✓ Preferred
Qwen3.8 Flash
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Ministral 8B Instruct vs Qwen3.8 Flash.

Which is better, Ministral 8B Instruct or Qwen3.8 Flash?

Qwen3.8 Flash leads the LLM Stats Score 49.6 to -4.5. Ministral 8B Instruct is made by Mistral AI and Qwen3.8 Flash is made by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team. The best choice depends on your use case — compare their capability indexes, individual benchmarks, pricing, and limits above.

How does Ministral 8B Instruct compare to Qwen3.8 Flash in benchmarks?

Ministral 8B Instruct scores MT-Bench: 83.0%, Winogrande: 75.3%, ARC-C: 71.9%, Arena Hard: 70.9%, MBPP pass@1: 70.0%. Qwen3.8 Flash scores MathVision: 95.7%, LiveCodeBench v6: 91.9%, GPQA: 91.7%, CharXiv-R: 90.6%, RealWorldQA: 88.5%.

Is Ministral 8B Instruct cheaper than Qwen3.8 Flash?

Ministral 8B Instruct is 1.5x cheaper for input tokens. Ministral 8B Instruct costs $0.10/M input and $0.10/M output via mistral. Qwen3.8 Flash costs $0.15/M input and $0.47/M output via novita.

What are the context window sizes for Ministral 8B Instruct and Qwen3.8 Flash?

Ministral 8B Instruct supports 128K tokens and Qwen3.8 Flash supports 1.0M tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Ministral 8B Instruct and Qwen3.8 Flash?

Key differences include LLM Stats Score (-4.5 vs 49.6), context window (128K vs 1.0M), input pricing ($0.10 vs $0.15/M), multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (Mistral Research License vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Ministral 8B Instruct and Qwen3.8 Flash?

Ministral 8B Instruct is developed by Mistral AI and Qwen3.8 Flash is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

Related comparisons