Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) | Mixtral 8x7B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.18 | $0.45 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $0.7 | $0.7 |
Verdict. Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) wins the overall benchmark matchup 1–0 across 1 overlapping categories, but raw benchmark score is only one input to the decision.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Mixtral 8x7B Instruct is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Mixtral 8x7B Instruct makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) is strongest on Intelligence Index (4.8). Mixtral 8x7B Instruct leads on Intelligence Index (2.0).
Speed. Speed data is incomplete for this pair; benchmark and price should decide.
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): Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) costs $15.90 ($191/year); Mixtral 8x7B Instruct costs $24.00 ($288/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) ≈ $2.30/run, Mixtral 8x7B Instruct ≈ $3.65/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) ≈ $106/run, Mixtral 8x7B Instruct ≈ $160/run. Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) 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 8B (Non-reasoning) 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 8B (Non-reasoning) wins 1 out of 12 benchmarks compared to 0 for Mixtral 8x7B Instruct. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) generates tokens faster at 39 tok/s vs — tok/s. Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) also has lower time-to-first-token (3.77s vs —s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) for lower cost, Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) for stronger benchmark performance, and Qwen3 8B (Non-reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.