Mistral Small vs Qwen3.8-27B
Comparing Mistral Small and Qwen3.8-27B across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.
Mistral AI · Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team · Updated for 2026
Which is better?
Mistral Small and Qwen3.8-27B trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.
Based on current benchmark, pricing, and model metadata for 2026.
Choose Mistral Small
- you want predictable pricing at $0.20/M input and $0.60/M output
Choose Qwen3.8-27B
- you want the most recent training data — it shipped Aug 2026
At a glance
The differences that matter most.
Performance Benchmarks
Comparative analysis across standard metrics
Mistral Small and Qwen3.8-27Bdon't have any common benchmark datasets to compare. They may have been evaluated on different testing suites.
Arena Performance
Playground indexes and blind preference scores
Model Size
Parameter count comparison
Qwen3.8-27B has 5.8B more parameters than Mistral Small, making it 26.3% larger.
Context Window
Maximum input and output token capacity
Only Mistral Small specifies input context (32,768 tokens). Only Mistral Small specifies output context (32,768 tokens).
Input Capabilities
Supported data types and modalities
Qwen3.8-27B supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small does not.
Qwen3.8-27B can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.
Mistral Small
Qwen3.8-27B
License
Usage and distribution terms
Mistral Small is licensed under Mistral Research License, while Qwen3.8-27B uses Apache 2.0.
License differences may affect how you can use these models in commercial or open-source projects.
Mistral Research License
Open weights
Apache 2.0
Open weights
Release Timeline
When each model was launched
Mistral Small was released on 2024-09-17, while Qwen3.8-27B was released on 2026-08-14.
Qwen3.8-27B is 23 months newer than Mistral Small.
Sep 17, 2024
1.9 years ago
Aug 14, 2026
1 weeks ago
1.9yr newerKnowledge Cutoff
When training data ends
Neither model specifies a knowledge cutoff date.
Unable to compare the recency of their training data.
Outputs Comparison
Judge for yourself.
Run your own prompts against Mistral Small and Qwen3.8-27B side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.
FAQ
Common questions about Mistral Small vs Qwen3.8-27B.