Verdict
Built from the measurements below
- Accuracy is too close to call: Ministral 3 14B 2512 scored 33.8% and Qwen3.6 35B A3B 37.5% on the same 80 questions, a gap within what chance alone could produce.
- Ministral 3 14B 2512 is 12× cheaper per question as billed ($0.00031 vs $0.0037), reasoning tokens included.
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B generates text 4.2× faster: 135 tokens per second against 32.
- Qwen3.6 35B A3B starts answering sooner: 0.4 s to the first token, against 0.6 s for Ministral 3 14B 2512.
Which should you choose?
Choose Ministral 3 14B 2512 for the lower cost per correct answer ($0.00092 against $0.0099) and shorter outputs (about 1,255 tokens per question against 3,563). Choose Qwen3.6 35B A3B for faster streaming, a quicker first token and more hosts to choose from on OpenRouter (10 against 1). The widest subject gap is in humanities & social science: Qwen3.6 35B A3B answered 7 of 9 correctly, Ministral 3 14B 2512 5 of 9. With so few questions per subject, treat this as a lead to test on your own prompts, not a result.
Accuracy gap -3.7 points (z = -0.50). We call a winner only when z is at least 1.96, the usual 95% threshold. Speed, latency and price need a 10% margin.