Qwen vs Mistral AI
A side-by-side look at scores, pricing and features — with RECATOOLS' ASEAN-aware verdict for each.
Qwen
Alibaba Cloud's LLM family, open weights through to the Qwen3.8-Max fl...
Visit
|
Mistral AI
Paris model lab with open weights, cheap APIs and the Vibe agent
Visit
|
|
|---|---|---|
| RECATOOLS Score | 8.6 / 10 | 8.4 / 10 |
| Capability | ||
| Value for money | ||
| Ease of use | ||
| ASEAN readiness | ||
| API quality | ||
| Pricing | Freemium | Freemium |
| Free tier | Open weights to self-host; free Qwen Chat; 1M free tokens per model for 90 days in Model Studio's Singapore region | Vibe Free: limited messages, web searches and coding sessions, basic image generation, 100+ connectors; Apache 2.0 weights free to self-host |
| Paid from | From $0.03 per million input tokens (qwen3.7-flash, prompts up to 32K, Singapore region) | $14.99/month (Vibe Pro, excluding tax); API from $0.10 per million tokens |
| Has API | ✓ | ✓ |
| Open source | ✓ | ✓ |
| Free to use | ✓ | ✓ |
| Users | Consumer app ~203M MAU (April 2026), #3 globally | 500k+ API users |
| Founded | 2023 | 2023 |
| Maker | Alibaba Cloud | Arthur Mensch, Guillaume Lample, Timothee Lacroix |
| Verdict | Qwen is the most practical open-weight family to build on in 2026: Apache 2.0 models from under a billion to hundreds of billions of parameters, and now even the Max-tier flagship available to download. Hosted pricing in... |
Mistral is a good choice when you want models you can host yourself or buy cheaply by the token: Small 4, Large 3 and the Ministral 3 models are Apache 2.0, and API rates sit well below most US frontier labs. The Vibe ag... |
| Full review → | Full review → |
← Back to AI Directory
Comparisons cover up to 4 tools. Scores are RECATOOLS editorial assessments; verify current pricing on each vendor's site.