Codestral 2508 vs Qwen3.6 Plus
Updated October 21, 2026. 7 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a coding score, 44.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; Codestral 2508 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Codestral 2508 has the edge where output tokens cost 2.2x less.
- Shared results
- 7
- Codestral 2508 only
- 0
- Qwen3.6 Plus only
- 76
- Like-for-like categories
- 2 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a coding score, so no call is made.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a AA Intelligence Index result, 27.0.
Directional only
Reasoning
GPQA Diamond
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a GPQA Diamond result, 87.4%.
Directional only
Math
AIME
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a AIME result, 94.6%.
Directional only
Knowledge
MMLU Pro
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a MMLU Pro result, 87.7%.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus leads, 1243 against 1013.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3.6 Plus
Qwen3.6 Plus takes 1M tokens against 256K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Codestral 2508
Codestral 2508 $0.0008, Qwen3.6 Plus $0.0013 per turn.
List prices
Cost per solved task
One SWE-bench Verified task, solved
No call
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has the number, $1.19.
Directional only
At a glance
- Coding index
- Codestral 2508 not benchmarked, Qwen3.6 Plus 44.1 from 3 benchmarks.
- Widest category
- Web design, 27.3 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Design Arena: game dev: Codestral 2508 968 against Qwen3.6 Plus 1211, 30.4 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Codestral 2508 $0.90 against Qwen3.6 Plus $1.95 per million output tokens, 2.2x apart.
- Context window
- Codestral 2508 takes 256K tokens, Qwen3.6 Plus 1M.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Codestral 2508 | Bars | Qwen3.6 Plus | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 0 | 1 | ||
| Web design | 0 | 6 | ||
| All shared boards | 0 | 7 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index01
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | Not measured | 1461 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| AA Coding Index | Not measured | 54.5 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LiveCodeBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 86.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| SWE-bench Verified (Vals AI) | Not measured | 73.4% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vibe Code Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 25.6% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Code migration (Vals AI) | Not measured | 11.1% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| ProgramBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 0.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Terminal-Bench 2.1 (Vals AI) | Not measured | 53.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 43.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| ALE-Bench | 137.8 | 670.1 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| LMArena Text: coding | Not measured | 1467 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | Not measured | 1462 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena WebDev: React | Not measured | 1454 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena WebDev: HTML | Not measured | 1463 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena WebDev: from an image | Not measured | 1472 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 23 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | Not measured | 27.0 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | Not measured | 147.3 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Finance Agent (Vals AI) | Not measured | 40.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Tax Agent Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 7.7% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Legal Research Bench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 14.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Excel Modeling Benchmark (Vals AI) | Not measured | 32.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| τ²-Bench Telecom | Not measured | 97.7% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vending-Bench 2 | Not measured | $5,115 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 33 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond | Not measured | 87.4% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MMMU Pro (Vals AI) | Not measured | 84.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 88.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | Not measured | 27.8% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| GPQA Diamond (Epoch AI run) | Not measured | 88.4% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Chess puzzles | Not measured | 14.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Mystery game puzzles | Not measured | 12.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | Not measured | 1448 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | Not measured | 1454 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | Not measured | 1455 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 11 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AIME | Not measured | 94.6% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| OTIS Mock AIME | Not measured | 93.3% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| FrontierMath, tiers 1 to 3 | Not measured | 38.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: math | Not measured | 1449 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | Not measured | 1448 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 8 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index12 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro | Not measured | 87.7% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LegalBench (Vals AI) | Not measured | 84.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CaseLaw (Vals AI) | Not measured | 51.5% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CorpFin (Vals AI) | Not measured | 61.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| TaxEval (Vals AI) | Not measured | 74.7% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MortgageTax (Vals AI) | Not measured | 68.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MedCode (Vals AI) | Not measured | 36.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| SimpleQA Verified | Not measured | 44.1% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: science | Not measured | 1439 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | Not measured | 1442 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | Not measured | 1437 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | Not measured | 1430 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 5 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index06
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1013 | 1243 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1017 | 1233 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Design Arena: game dev | 968 | 1211 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1017 | 1228 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1020 | 1202 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1007 | 1236 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
| Design Arena: SVG | Not measured | 1161 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | Not measured | 1114 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index25 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| SAGE (Vals AI) | Not measured | 44.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| MedScribe (Vals AI) | Not measured | 77.0% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Vals Multimodal Index | Not measured | 51.5% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| IFBench | Not measured | 75.2% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | Not measured | 78.3% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| DTBench | Not measured | 81.9% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMCA | Not measured | 33.1% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| CL-bench | Not measured | 20.3% | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text | Not measured | 1436 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | Not measured | 1424 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | Not measured | 1404 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: English | Not measured | 1445 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | Not measured | 1424 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | Not measured | 1477 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: German | Not measured | 1451 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | Not measured | 1390 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | Not measured | 1379 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: French | Not measured | 1455 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | Not measured | 1432 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | Not measured | 1434 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | Not measured | 1433 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | Not measured | 1438 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | Not measured | 1439 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | Not measured | 1418 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | Not measured | 1402 | Only Qwen3.6 Plus measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 21 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Codestral 2508 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Mistral Codestral 2508 | Qwen3.6 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral AI | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | August 1, 2025 | April 2, 2026 |
| Context window | 256K | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.30 | $0.325 |
| Output $/Mtok | $0.90 | $1.95 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | 44.1 |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 3 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | $1.19 |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Codestral 2508 better than Qwen3.6 Plus for coding?
Only Qwen3.6 Plus has a coding score, 44.1 on the Vibe Coding Index; Codestral 2508 has none, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Codestral 2508 has the edge where output tokens cost 2.2x less.
Which is cheaper, Codestral 2508 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Codestral 2508 costs $0.30 per million input tokens and $0.90 per million output tokens; Qwen3.6 Plus costs $0.325 and $1.95. Cost per solved task is known for Qwen3.6 Plus only.
Which has the bigger context window, Codestral 2508 or Qwen3.6 Plus?
Qwen3.6 Plus, with 1M tokens against 256K.
How many benchmarks is the Codestral 2508 vs Qwen3.6 Plus comparison based on?
7 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Codestral 2508's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.6 Plus's on 3. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.