Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Qwen2.5 Turbo | Ministral 3 14B |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.05 | $0.2 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.2 | $0.2 |
Verdict. Ministral 3 14B takes the aggregate benchmark matchup 2–0 across 2 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, Ministral 3 14B is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Ministral 3 14B makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Qwen2.5 Turbo is strongest on Intelligence Index (6.0). Ministral 3 14B leads on Coding Index (14.4), Intelligence Index (11.2).
Speed. On throughput, Qwen2.5 Turbo generates tokens at 108 tok/s versus 85 tok/s — about 21% faster. On time-to-first-token, Ministral 3 14B responds in 960ms vs 2160ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. Alibaba and Mistral sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Alibaba tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Mistral 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): Qwen2.5 Turbo costs $4.50 ($54/year); Ministral 3 14B costs $9.00 ($108/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Qwen2.5 Turbo ≈ $0.65/run, Ministral 3 14B ≈ $1.40/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Qwen2.5 Turbo ≈ $30/run, Ministral 3 14B ≈ $60/run. Qwen2.5 Turbo 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
Qwen2.5 Turbo is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.09/M tokens vs $0.20/M for Ministral 3 14B.
Ministral 3 14B wins 2 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Qwen2.5 Turbo. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen2.5 Turbo generates tokens faster at 108 tok/s vs 85 tok/s. However, Ministral 3 14B has lower time-to-first-token (0.96s vs 2.16s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen2.5 Turbo for lower cost, Ministral 3 14B for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen2.5 Turbo for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.