GPT-4.1 mini vs Magistral Small vs Qwen3 30B A3B

It is close. Our weighted score puts them within 2 points (GPT-4.1 mini 59/100, Qwen3 30B A3B 57/100, Magistral Small 49/100), so choose by what matters most for your work: Qwen3 30B A3B for raw capability and GPT-4.1 mini for long inputs. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Qwen3 30B A3B is cheaper at $0.108 input / $0.475 output per million tokens (median across 14 API providers). GPT-4.1 mini costs $0.40 input / $1.60 output per million tokens (official OpenAI API price); Magistral Small costs $0.50 input / $1.50 output per million tokens (median across 1 API provider). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.20 per million tokens for Qwen3 30B A3B versus $0.70 for GPT-4.1 mini (3.5× as much) and $0.75 for Magistral Small (3.8× as much).

Qwen3 30B A3B scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3 30B A3B 136.2 (#126 of 165), GPT-4.1 mini 134.9 (#129 of 165) and Magistral Small 133.1 (#134 of 165). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (130.8–138.5 vs 131.1–136.4), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — GPT-4.1 mini 65.9%, Qwen3 30B A3B 61.7%, Magistral Small 56.1%; OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 — Qwen3 30B A3B 62.8%, GPT-4.1 mini 44.7%, Magistral Small 30.0%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for GPT-4.1 mini, Magistral Small and Qwen3 30B A3B yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3 30B A3B leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

GPT-4.1 mini has the largest context window at 1,047,576 tokens, against 131,072 for Magistral Small and 131,072 for Qwen3 30B A3B. Maximum output per response: GPT-4.1 mini up to 32,768, Magistral Small up to 8,192, Qwen3 30B A3B up to 16,384 tokens.

GPT-4.1 mini accepts text, images and PDFs; Magistral Small accepts text; Qwen3 30B A3B accepts text. GPT-4.1 mini handles the widest range of inputs.

Magistral Small and Qwen3 30B A3B publishes its weights (Apache 2.0) and can be self-hosted; GPT-4.1 mini is proprietary.

Magistral Small is the newest, released Jun 10, 2025. Qwen3 30B A3B came out Apr 28, 2025; GPT-4.1 mini came out Apr 14, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: GPT-4.1 mini Apr 2024.

Each model gets a 0–100 score on capability (50%, independent benchmark results); price (25%, blended price per million tokens (3 input : 1 output), log scale); inputs & features (15%, image, PDF, audio and video input, tool calling, structured output and reasoning); context window (10%, maximum tokens per request, log scale). Dimensions missing for any model are dropped and the remaining weights rescaled, so every model is judged on the same evidence. Specs and prices come from public model listings and the labs’ own API pages; capability scores come from independent benchmark runs. Data updated Nov 2, 2026.