Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1 at a glance

Qwen3.5 4B from Alibaba Cloud and Mistral Small 3.1 from Mistral AI are both in the Text Generation category, available through the EmpirioLabs API.

Key differences

• Qwen3.5 4B is the newer release (Mar 2, 2026); Mistral Small 3.1 was released on Mar 17, 2025.
• Qwen3.5 4B has the larger context window: 256K tokens, against 89.6K for Mistral Small 3.1.
• Input types only Qwen3.5 4B accepts: Video.
• Capabilities listed only for Qwen3.5 4B: reasoning, video, cache, multimodal, json mode, logprobs.
• Both models list the same rate for Web Search (Linkup) (per call when invoked).

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: specs

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: API pricing

Live rates from the EmpirioLabs catalog for both models. Each rate card always matches what the API charges.

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: API parameters

Request parameters each model lists on EmpirioLabs, with the allowed values or range where one applies. A dash marks a parameter the model does not list.

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: limits and notes

Qwen3.5 4B

Supports text, image, and video input, streaming, function tools, structured JSON output, seed control, and thinking mode on by default. Use reasoning_effort or thinking_budget for bounded thinking, or enable_thinking=false for direct answers. Automatic cache reads are billed at the cached-input rate when reported by the model service. Explicit cache controls are not supported.

Mistral Small 3.1

Input is limited to about 500,000 characters per request.

How to call Qwen3.5 4B and Mistral Small 3.1

Qwen3.5 4B serves the OpenAI-compatible Chat Completions API. Point any OpenAI SDK at https://api.empiriolabs.ai/v1 with your EmpirioLabs API key and use the model id qwen3-5-4b. Both models are called through the same endpoint. Set model to qwen3-5-4b or mistral-small-3-1. Get an API key from the EmpirioLabs dashboard.

curl https://api.empiriolabs.ai/v1/chat/completions \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer $EMPIRIOLABS_API_KEY" \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{
    "model": "qwen3-5-4b",
    "messages": [
      {"role": "user", "content": "Write a haiku about the ocean."}
    ]
  }'

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: tests and guides

Prompt tests and comparison runs that cover both models.

Guides LightOnOCR-3 4B vs Qwen3.5 4B vs Gemma 4 26B-A4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: OCR on three documents A document OCR model and three vision chat models on the same three pages (an invoice, a two-column report, and lecture...

Qwen3.5 4B vs Mistral Small 3.1: common questions

What is the difference between Qwen3.5 4B and Mistral Small 3.1?

Qwen3.5 4B is the newer release (Mar 2, 2026); Mistral Small 3.1 was released on Mar 17, 2025. Qwen3.5 4B has the larger context window: 256K tokens, against 89.6K for Mistral Small 3.1. Input types only Qwen3.5 4B accepts: Video. The specs, rate cards, and parameters on this page come from the live EmpirioLabs catalog.

Which is newer, Qwen3.5 4B or Mistral Small 3.1?

Qwen3.5 4B is the newer release (Mar 2, 2026); Mistral Small 3.1 was released on Mar 17, 2025.

Which has the lower rate, Qwen3.5 4B or Mistral Small 3.1?

Both models list the same rate for Web Search (Linkup) (per call when invoked). Both live rate cards are on this page and always match what the API charges.

Can I switch between Qwen3.5 4B and Mistral Small 3.1 without rebuilding my integration?

Yes. Both models use POST /v1/chat/completions with the same EmpirioLabs API key, so most integrations switch by changing the model value. Check the parameters table on this page first if you rely on a model-specific parameter.

Can I try Qwen3.5 4B and Mistral Small 3.1 in the browser before integrating?

Yes. Open each model in the EmpirioLabs playground and run the same prompt on both, with the parameters the API exposes.