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Mistral Small vs Qwen4-Max-Preview

Comparing Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Preview across benchmarks, pricing, and capabilities.

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

Which is better?

Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Preview trade strengths across price, capabilities, and technical limits. The better choice depends on the workload.

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

Choose Mistral Small

  • you need open weights you can self-host or fine-tune

Choose Qwen4-Max-Preview

  • you want the most recent training data — it shipped Nov 2026

At a glance

The differences that matter most.

Mistral Small
Mistral AI
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Benchmark wins
—
—
Input price
$0.20 / M
— / M
Output price
$0.60 / M
— / M
Context window
32,768
—

Individual benchmarks

0 reported for Mistral Small · 0 for Qwen4-Max-Preview

No common benchmarks found

Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Previewdon'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

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).

Mistral AI
Mistral Small
Input32,768 tokens
Output32,768 tokens
Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Input- tokens
Output- tokens
Fri Nov 13 2026 • llm-stats.com

Input capabilities

Documented input modalities across available providers

Qwen4-Max-Preview supports multimodal inputs, whereas Mistral Small does not.

Qwen4-Max-Preview can handle both text and other forms of data like images, making it suitable for multimodal applications.

Mistral Small

Text
Images
Audio
Video

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Text
Images
Audio
Video

License

Usage and distribution terms

Mistral Small is licensed under Mistral Research License, while Qwen4-Max-Preview uses a proprietary license.

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

Mistral Small

Mistral Research License

Open weights

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Proprietary

Closed source

Release Timeline

When each model was launched

Mistral Small was released on 2024-09-17, while Qwen4-Max-Preview was released on 2026-11-11.

Qwen4-Max-Preview is 26 months newer than Mistral Small.

Mistral Small

Sep 17, 2024

2.2 years ago

Qwen4-Max-Preview

Nov 11, 2026

1 days ago

2.2yr 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

Outputs Comparison

Notice missing or incorrect data?

Judge for yourself.

Run your own prompts against Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Preview side-by-side, then vote on the output you prefer.

Mistral Small
✓ Preferred
Qwen4-Max-Preview
Open in Playground

FAQ

Common questions about Mistral Small vs Qwen4-Max-Preview.

Which is better, Mistral Small or Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Mistral Small (Mistral AI) and Qwen4-Max-Preview (Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team) each have strengths in different areas. Compare their benchmark scores, pricing, context windows, and capabilities above to determine which fits your needs.

What are the context window sizes for Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Mistral Small supports 33K tokens and Qwen4-Max-Preview supports an unknown number of tokens. A larger context window lets you process longer documents, conversations, or codebases in a single request.

What are the main differences between Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Key differences include multimodal support (no vs yes), licensing (Mistral Research License vs Proprietary). See the full comparison above for benchmark-by-benchmark results.

Who makes Mistral Small and Qwen4-Max-Preview?

Mistral Small is developed by Mistral AI and Qwen4-Max-Preview is developed by Alibaba Cloud / Qwen Team.

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