Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Mixtral 8x7B Instruct | Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.45 | $0.18 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.7 | $0.7 |
Verdict. Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 1–0 across 1 categories. Real workloads usually care about a handful of specific tasks — see the per-benchmark table above.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Mixtral 8x7B Instruct is strongest on Intelligence Index (2.0). Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct leads on Intelligence Index (8.2).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
Provider. Mistral and Alibaba sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Mistral tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Alibaba often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Mixtral 8x7B Instruct costs $24.00 ($288/year); Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct costs $15.90 ($191/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Mixtral 8x7B Instruct ≈ $3.65/run, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct ≈ $2.30/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Mixtral 8x7B Instruct ≈ $160/run, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct ≈ $106/run. Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.31/M tokens vs $0.51/M for Mixtral 8x7B Instruct.
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct wins 1 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Mixtral 8x7B Instruct. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct generates tokens faster at 107 tok/s vs — tok/s. However, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct has lower time-to-first-token (2.26s vs —s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for lower cost, Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3 VL 8B Instruct for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.