Choose Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) if…
- cost matters at scale — it is 80% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($7.13 vs $33.75 a month for 50,000 support chats)
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) vs Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Neither wins outright: Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) is the pick when cost matters at scale, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct when you need log-probabilities.
Key numbers
| Spec | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Qwen |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.07 | $0.25 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.07 | $0.75 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.07 | $0.38 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 84% | 59% |
| Context window | 262K tokens (~393 pages) | 262K tokens (~393 pages) |
| Larger context than … of all models | 48% | 48% |
| Max output per response | 210K tokens (~157,300 words) | 236K tokens (~176,900 words) |
| Input types | text, image | image, text |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2025-12-02 | 2025-10-14 |
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What it costs for real workloads
Monthly cost at list price for five common workloads. Token counts per unit are stated so you can scale them to your own traffic. A workload that does not fit a model's context window is marked rather than priced.
| Workload (per month) | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $7.13 | $33.75 | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) saves $26.63 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $9.75 | $37.50 | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) saves $27.75 |
| Coding / tool-using agent 2,000 tasks — each a multi-step task with tool calls and file context (60,000 in / 6,000 out tokens) | $9.90 | $39.00 | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) saves $29.10 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $6.45 | $24.50 | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) saves $18.05 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $3.82 | $13.25 | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) saves $9.43 |
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | What it lets you do |
|---|---|---|---|
| Tool / function calling | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | call your APIs and run agent loops |
| Structured output (JSON schema) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | return JSON that validates against your schema |
| Reasoning / thinking mode | — | — | spend extra tokens thinking before answering hard problems |
| Image input | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | read screenshots, charts and scanned pages |
| Audio input | — | — | take speech or audio directly |
| File / PDF input | — | — | accept documents without your own parsing step |
| Image output | — | — | generate images, not just text |
| Built-in web search | — | — | answer from live web results |
| Seed (reproducible sampling) | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | ✓ Yes | read token confidence for classification and scoring |
From each model's published parameters and input/output types. “—” means not advertised, not proven absent.
Price history
- Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch): input price cut 50% ($0.15 → $0.07/1M), output price cut 50% ($0.15 → $0.07/1M) on 2026-09-10.
- Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: input price raised 53% ($0.12 → $0.25/1M), output price raised 39% ($0.46 → $0.75/1M) on 2026-10-10 (2 price changes since 2026-03-10).
| Date | Model | Input / 1M | Output / 1M |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2026-10-10 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | $0.25 | $0.75 |
| 2026-09-10 | Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) | $0.07 | $0.07 |
| 2026-08-06 | Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct | $0.12 | $0.46 |
Which should you choose?
Choose Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct if…
- you need log-probabilities — to read token confidence for classification and scoring; Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) does not advertise it
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) better than Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Neither wins outright: Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) is the pick when cost matters at scale, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct when you need log-probabilities. In short: Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) when cost matters at scale; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct when you need log-probabilities.
Which is cheaper, Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) is cheaper: $0.07 vs $0.38 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 80% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $7.13 against $33.75.
How much do Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct cost per million tokens?
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) costs $0.07 per 1M input tokens and $0.07 per 1M output tokens; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs $0.25 input and $0.75 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Both take 262K tokens per request — roughly 393 pages of text.
Do Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct support function calling and JSON output?
Tool calling — Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch): yes, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: yes. JSON-schema structured output — Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch): yes, Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: yes.
Can Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct read images?
Yes, both accept image input.
Is Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct free to use?
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
What is the maximum output length of Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct?
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) can write up to 210K tokens (about 157,300 words) per response; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct up to 236K (about 176,900 words).
When were Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) and Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct released?
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) was listed on 2025-12-02; Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct on 2025-10-14.
Has the price of Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) or Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct changed?
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch): input price cut 50% ($0.15 → $0.07/1M), output price cut 50% ($0.15 → $0.07/1M) on 2026-09-10. Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct: input price raised 53% ($0.12 → $0.25/1M), output price raised 39% ($0.46 → $0.75/1M) on 2026-10-10 (2 price changes since 2026-03-10).
About the two models
Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch)
A balanced model in the Ministral 3 family, Ministral 3 8B is a powerful, efficient tiny language model with vision capabilities.
Full Mistral: Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch) specs →Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct
Qwen3-VL-8B-Instruct is a multimodal vision-language model from the Qwen3-VL series, built for high-fidelity understanding and reasoning across text, images, and video. It features improved multimodal fusion with Interleaved-MRoPE for long-horizon...
Full Qwen: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct specs →