Choose Mistral: Mistral Small 4 if…
- you need seed (reproducible sampling) — to repeat a generation for tests and evals; Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) does not advertise it
Mistral: Mistral Small 4 vs Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch)
Neither wins outright: Mistral: Mistral Small 4 is the pick when you need seed (reproducible sampling), Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) when cost matters at scale.
Key numbers
| Spec | Mistral: Mistral Small 4 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Qwen |
| Input price (per 1M tokens) | $0.15 | $0.17 |
| Output price (per 1M tokens) | $0.60 | $0.25 |
| Blended price (3:1 input/output) | $0.26 | $0.19 |
| Cheaper than … of all models we track | 64% | 70% |
| 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 | text, image, video |
| Output types | text | text |
| Free variant | No | No |
| Listed since | 2026-03-16 | 2026-03-10 |
Advertisement
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: Mistral Small 4 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Customer-support chatbot 50,000 conversations — each a 6-turn conversation (1,500 in / 400 out tokens) | $23.25 | $17.75 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) saves $5.50 |
| RAG search over documents 20,000 questions — each a question answered from ~8 retrieved passages (6,000 in / 500 out tokens) | $24.00 | $22.90 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) saves $1.10 |
| 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) | $25.20 | $23.40 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) saves $1.80 |
| Batch summarisation 10,000 documents — each a 6,000-word report summarised to a page (8,000 in / 600 out tokens) | $15.60 | $15.10 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) saves $0.50 |
| Long-document analysis 500 documents — each a 150-page contract or codebase read in one pass (100,000 in / 2,000 out tokens) | $8.10 | $8.75 | Mistral: Mistral Small 4 saves $0.65 |
Capabilities side by side
| Capability | Mistral: Mistral Small 4 | Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) | 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 | ✓ Yes | ✓ Yes | 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 | — | repeat a generation for tests and evals |
| Log-probabilities | — | — | 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: Mistral Small 4: price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-03-31.
- Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch): price unchanged since we started tracking it on 2026-08-29.
Which should you choose?
Choose Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) if…
- cost matters at scale — it is 28% cheaper on a typical 3:1 input/output mix ($17.75 vs $23.25 a month for 50,000 support chats)
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral: Mistral Small 4 better than Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch)?
Neither wins outright: Mistral: Mistral Small 4 is the pick when you need seed (reproducible sampling), Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) when cost matters at scale. In short: Mistral: Mistral Small 4 when you need seed (reproducible sampling); Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) when cost matters at scale.
Which is cheaper, Mistral: Mistral Small 4 or Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch)?
Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) is cheaper: $0.19 vs $0.26 per 1M tokens at a typical 3:1 input/output mix, 28% less. For 50,000 support conversations a month that is $17.75 against $23.25.
How much do Mistral: Mistral Small 4 and Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) cost per million tokens?
Mistral: Mistral Small 4 costs $0.15 per 1M input tokens and $0.60 per 1M output tokens; Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) costs $0.17 input and $0.25 output. Output tokens are billed separately, so long answers shift the gap.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral: Mistral Small 4 or Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch)?
Both take 262K tokens per request — roughly 393 pages of text.
Do Mistral: Mistral Small 4 and Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) support function calling and JSON output?
Tool calling — Mistral: Mistral Small 4: yes, Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch): yes. JSON-schema structured output — Mistral: Mistral Small 4: yes, Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch): yes.
Can Mistral: Mistral Small 4 or Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) read images?
Yes, both accept image input.
Is Mistral: Mistral Small 4 or Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) free to use?
No free variant is listed for either; both are pay-per-token.
What is the maximum output length of Mistral: Mistral Small 4 and Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch)?
Mistral: Mistral Small 4 can write up to 210K tokens (about 157,300 words) per response; Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) up to 236K (about 176,900 words).
When were Mistral: Mistral Small 4 and Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) released?
Mistral: Mistral Small 4 was listed on 2026-03-16; Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) on 2026-03-10.
About the two models
Mistral: Mistral Small 4
Mistral Small 4 is the next major release in the Mistral Small family, unifying the capabilities of several flagship Mistral models into a single system. It combines strong reasoning from...
Full Mistral: Mistral Small 4 specs →Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch)
Qwen3.5-9B is a multimodal foundation model from the Qwen3.5 family, designed to deliver strong reasoning, coding, and visual understanding in an efficient 9B-parameter architecture. It uses a unified vision-language design...
Full Qwen: Qwen3.5-9B (batch) specs →