Devstral 2 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Benchmarks, API Token Pricing, Context Window & Speed Comparison
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Devstral 2 by Mistral AI and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct by Alibaba represent two of the frontier AI models analyzed in our comprehensive 2026 AI benchmark and LLM comparison. In this head-to-head evaluation, we examine API token pricing, context window specifications, inference speed (tokens per second), and empirical reasoning performance. From a pure economic perspective, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct holds a notable pricing advantage for token ingestion. On output generation, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is more economical per million generated tokens. In data-heavy architectures requiring extensive repository or document analysis, both models provide an identical memory horizon with 262K tokens. In latency-sensitive production environments, Devstral 2 leads in tokens-per-second throughput, making it ideal for real-time conversational agents and high-concurrency workflows. Below is the complete empirical head-to-head breakdown across cost, speed, context, and capability matrices.
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Devstral 2
Code Agent v2Second-generation open software engineering agent featuring 262K context, deep terminal agent capabilities, and hardened patch generation.
$1.50 / 1M
$4.50 / 1M
262.1K tokens
58.2%
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct
Open Code GiantMassive open coding champion trained specifically on over 7 trillion tokens of code, repository graphs, and technical documentation.
$0.00 / 1M
$0.00 / 1M
262.1K tokens
56.5%
Key Differences at a Glance
- Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is 1.0x cheaper for API usage (input + output tokens combined).
- Devstral 2 is faster at 70 tok/s vs 52 tok/s.
- Devstral 2 leads on SWE-bench coding (58.2% vs 56.5%).
| Feature | Devstral 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
Intelligence Index Composite reasoning & knowledge score (0-100) | 56 | 86 |
Provider | Mistral AI | Alibaba |
Input Price Cost per million input tokens | $1.50 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Output Price Cost per million output tokens | $4.50 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Blended Price Weighted 7:2:1 cache:input:output per 1M | $0.99 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Context Window Maximum input + output tokens | 262.1K tokens~393 A4 pages of text | 262.1K tokens~393 A4 pages of text |
Max Output Tokens Per single request | 66K | 16K |
Throughput Speed Tokens generated per second | 70 tok/s | 52 tok/s |
SWE-bench Verified Real-world software engineering | 58.2% | 56.5% |
GPQA Diamond Graduate-level reasoning | 66.5% | 70% |
Cached Input Price Prompt caching discount per 1M tokens | $0.35 / 1M | $0.00 / 1M |
Who Wins Where?
At-a-glance decision frameworkEmpirical Head-to-Head Benchmark Scores
Official evaluation metrics verified by independent third-party research labs.
Industry benchmark evaluating real-world GitHub issue resolution and multi-file debugging.
Challenging questions created by domain experts to test complex PhD-level reasoning.
Hardened reasoning and academic knowledge benchmark with reduced lucky-guess probability.
Crowdsourced human preference evaluation based on blind, head-to-head model battles.
Autonomous multi-step tasks executed inside a real command-line terminal environment.
Contamination-free competitive programming problems collected continuously over time.
American Invitational Mathematics Examination — multi-step Olympiad-level reasoning.
Accuracy when reasoning over very large inputs that fill the model context window.
Tokens emitted per second during active generation streaming.
Latency & Response Time
Time to first token (TTFT) and estimated end-to-end response time for a typical 500-token response.
Real-Time Interactive Token Cost Simulator
Adjust sliders to calculate projected monthly cloud API spending with prompt caching discounts.
Devstral 2 · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Expanded 262K context window to ingest entire multi-package monorepos
- State-of-the-art 58.2% SWE-bench score for an open-weights model
- Hardened against regression loops and terminal syntax hallucination
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Substantial 123B parameter memory requirement for local execution
- API token costs are moderately high for intensive multi-turn loops
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct · Strengths & Key Advantages
- Sweeping code generation capabilities rivaling proprietary coding leaders
- Native comprehension of multirepo dependencies, git diffs, and linting rules
- 262K context window allows loading substantial software codebases directly
Considerations & Trade-offs
- Substantial VRAM requirements necessitate dedicated multi-accelerator clusters
- Can occasionally over-engineer simple utility function requests
Token Use & Task Economics
Estimated cost and token consumption to complete one representative agentic task.
| Metric | Devstral 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
Cost per Task Estimated USD to finish one task | $0.65 | $0.00 |
Output Tokens / Task Tokens generated per task | 42K | 25K |
Reasoning Tokens / Task Thinking tokens burned per task | 20K | 9K |
Technical Specifications
Architecture, release timeline, capabilities, and modalities.
| Feature | Devstral 2 | Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Official API Model ID (SDK) | devstral-2-latest | qwen3-coder-480b-a35b-instruct |
| API Protocol | OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI | OpenAI-Compatible REST / vLLM / SGLang / HuggingFace TGI |
| Release Date | 2025-12 | 2025-04 |
| Knowledge Cutoff | October 2025 | March 2025 |
| Architecture | Advanced Agentic Code Transformer | Code-Specialized Sparse Mixture-of-Experts Transformer |
| Parameters | 123B | 480B total (35B active MoE) |
| Enterprise Rate Limits (RPM / TPM) | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud | Unlimited (Hardware-bound on self-hosted GPU) / 10,000 RPM Cloud · Unlimited local throughput / 10M+ TPM Managed Cloud |
| Long-Context Tier (>128K/200K) | Flat rate ($1.5/1M in) across full 262K window | Free across full context window (only KV-cache VRAM scales) |
| Prompt Cache Policy & TTL | Cached input at $0.35/1M tokens | Automatic prefix KV-caching in vLLM / SGLang (0 cost) |
| Computer Use / GUI Agent | API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop) | API / CLI Tool-Use & DOM Agent ready (no raw pixel desktop click loop) |
| MCP & Parallel Tool Calling | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema | Native MCP Client/Server ready · Parallel function calling · 100% Strict JSON Schema |
| Web Search Grounding & Sandbox | Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools | Supported via external Tavily/Exa Search & E2B/Docker Sandbox tools |
| Official Fine-Tuning Support | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) | Full Weights SFT, LoRA, QLoRA, DPO & GRPO RL (Unsloth / Axolotl / Llama-Factory) |
| Multimodal Token Billing | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) | Text BPE (~4 chars/token) |
| Quantization & Min GPU VRAM | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 76 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 264 GB VRAM (Native BF16) | BF16 / FP16, FP8 Dynamic, INT4 AWQ / GPTQ, GGUF (Q4_K_M / Q8_0) · 298 GB VRAM (4-bit Quantized) · 1032 GB VRAM (Native BF16) |
| Safety & Frontier Classification | Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma) | Open-Weights System Card + Customizable Guardrail Layer (Llama Guard / ShieldGemma) |
| Enterprise Compliance (ZDR/HIPAA/SOC2) | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control | 100% Air-Gapped On-Premises / Private VPC · Full HIPAA, GDPR & SOC2 Control |
| Input Modalities | text | text |
| Output Modalities | text | text |
Devstral 2 vs Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct: Quick Answers
Which is more intelligent, Devstral 2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is more intelligent. It scores 86 compared with 56 on the composite Intelligence Index.
Which model is faster?
Devstral 2 is faster, generating 70 tokens per second compared with 52 tokens per second.
Which model is cheaper to run?
Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is cheaper at $0.00 per 1M tokens blended, compared with $0.99 (7:2:1 cache:input:output ratio).
Which model has lower latency?
Devstral 2 has lower latency, with a time to first token of 0.52s compared with 0.76s.
Verdict
Verdict & Model Selection Recommendation: Choose Devstral 2 if your priority is Whole-repository migrations, autonomous developer agents, and complex architecture refactors. Its performance in demanding tasks justifies its operational token cost. Choose Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct if your workflow prioritizes Enterprise software development agents, automated code migration, and security vulnerability auditing. For large-scale batch processing or customer-facing conversational interfaces, its balance of speed and economics delivers superior ROI.
Frequently asked questions
How does Devstral 2 compare to Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct in API token pricing and cost per token?+
Devstral 2 costs $1.50 per 1M input tokens and $4.50 per 1M output tokens, whereas Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct costs $0.00 input and $0.00 output. Overall, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct is the more cost-effective model for high-volume API pipelines. Both models support prompt caching discounts of up to 90% for repeated prompt prefixes.
Which model has a larger context window: Devstral 2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?+
Both Devstral 2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct offer an identical context window of 262K tokens (~197k words). Both architectures provide equal capacity for large document ingestion, multi-file codebases, and extended multi-turn conversation histories.
Which AI model is better for software engineering and coding: Devstral 2 or Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?+
Devstral 2 scores 58.2% on SWE-bench Verified while Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct scores 56.5%. For autonomous software engineering and multi-file debugging, Devstral 2 holds the verified benchmark lead.
What is the difference in reasoning capability and extended thinking between Devstral 2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?+
Devstral 2 features native chain-of-thought extended thinking mode with configurable reasoning effort. In contrast, Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct provides chain-of-thought reasoning depth for complex math and science.
How does inference speed (tokens per second) compare between Devstral 2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct?+
Devstral 2 generates approximately 70 tokens per second, while Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct delivers 52 tokens per second. In latency-sensitive production environments, Devstral 2 provides faster time-to-first-token (TTFT) and higher streaming response velocity.
Can you implement a tiered LLM routing setup combining Devstral 2 and Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct to optimize costs?+
Yes! High-efficiency architectures route high-frequency routine classification and conversational tasks to Qwen3-Coder 480B-A35B Instruct to save operational costs, and dynamically escalate complex architectural queries or reasoning tasks to Devstral 2. This tiered routing pattern cuts overall API bills by up to 70%.
Understand key metrics like context window, token pricing, reasoning mode, and SWE-bench scores in our comprehensive AI glossary.
Related reading
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Benchmark scores, token prices, and rate limits evolve rapidly as AI labs release model updates. Always verify current specifications and pricing on the official provider documentation.
Sources: GetInfoUs Independent AI Benchmarks & Official API Specs