Mistral Small 3 vs QVQ 72B Preview

Performance benchmarks + pricing comparison — updated April 2026

Mistral Small 3

Mistral

Mistral's cost-effective model. Very affordable for general-purpose tasks.

Input$0.100/M
Output$0.300/M
Context32K tokens
Best ForHigh-volume tasks, cost optimization
Benchmark42/100

QVQ 72B Preview

Qwen

Qwen's visual reasoning model. Advanced image + text reasoning capabilities.

Input$0.500/M
Output$1.50/M
Context32K tokens
Best ForImage analysis, visual question answering, multimodal reasoning

Cost Comparison by Scenario

Estimated cost per project with 30% cache hit rate. Actual costs may vary based on usage patterns.

ScenarioMistral Small 3QVQ 72B PreviewSavings
Small Script (1K lines) $0.01 $0.06 Mistral Small 3 saves $0.05 (80%)
Medium Feature (10K lines) $0.10 $0.48 Mistral Small 3 saves $0.38 (80%)
Large Project (50K lines) $0.47 $2.38 Mistral Small 3 saves $1.90 (80%)
Code Review (5K lines) $0.02 $0.13 Mistral Small 3 saves $0.10 (80%)

Verdict

Mistral Small 3 wins on both price and performance — $0.100/M input with a benchmark score of N/A/100.

For most developers, this is the clear choice between these two models.

Compare with Other Models