Model comparison
Kimi K3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Kimi K3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 59.5 to 40.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Medium 3.5 costs 2.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 20 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 20 benchmarks with published results for both. Kimi K3 scores higher in 8 categories and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 1 category; 8 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Kimi K3 leads 63.0 to 17.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is NYT Connections (extended): 93.6% for Kimi K3 and 12.9% for Mistral Medium 3.5.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 is cheaper at $1.50 / $7.50 per million input/output tokens, against $3 / $15 for Kimi K3.
- Kimi K3 accepts more context: 1.05M tokens versus 262K.
Side by side
| Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Moonshot AI | Mistral AI |
| Noometry Index | 59.5 | 40.2 |
| Released | 2026-07-16 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |
| Context window | 1.05M | 262K |
| Max output | 1.05M | 210K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $3 | $1.50 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $15 | $7.50 |
| Results tracked | 53 | 22 |
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Category by category
Coding Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 61.0 (#10), Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1654 | 1264 |
| LMArena Coding | 1508 | 1461 |
| DeepSWE | 68.5% | — |
| FrontierCode | 44.2% | — |
| FrontierSWE | 25.9% | — |
| SciCode | 59.5% | — |
| WeirdML | 82.6% | — |
| ALE-Bench | 1,524 | — |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Kimi K3: 41.8 (#20), Mistral Medium 3.5: —
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| APEX-Agents | 50.6% | — |
| τ²-bench Banking | 37.1% | — |
| PostTrainBench | 32% | — |
| GBAEval | 48.3% | — |
| GDP.pdf | 19% | — |
| Vending-Bench 2 | 5,165 | — |
Reasoning Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 63.0 (#17), Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| NYT Connections (extended) | 93.6% | 12.9% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1496 | 1436 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 157.45 | 141.35 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | 60.4% | — |
| SimpleBench | 60.7% | — |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | — | 41.4% |
| ARC-AGI-1 | 94.5% | — |
| CritPt | 23.4% | — |
| Chess Puzzles | 39% | — |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | 26% | — |
| DTBench | 91.2% | — |
| LMCA | 52.7% | — |
| Surface Evolver Bench | 95% | — |
| ForecastBench | 61.1 | — |
Math Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 74.2 (#16), Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1491 | 1431 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | 72.2% | — |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | 39% | — |
| MathArena Final-Answer Competitions | 87.8% | — |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | 97.2% | — |
| ProofBench | 87% | — |
Knowledge Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 63.2 (#21), Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1521 | 1432 |
| GPQA Diamond | 93.1% | — |
| SimpleQA Verified | 50.6% | — |
Multimodal Too close to call
Kimi K3: 37.8 (#70), Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | — | 1223 |
| Blueprint-Bench 2 | 29.5% | — |
| Furniture Assembly | 34.2% | — |
Multilingual Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 56.3 (#21), Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1466 | 1404 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1529 | 1442 |
| LMArena French | 1491 | 1448 |
| LMArena German | 1488 | 1451 |
| LMArena Korean | 1458 | 1385 |
| LMArena Russian | 1482 | 1395 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1472 | 1409 |
| LMArena Japanese | 1487 | — |
Instruction Following Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 77.7 (#14), Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1483 | 1415 |
Long Context Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 45.8 (#29), Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1494 | 1415 |
Writing & Preference Kimi K3 leads
Kimi K3: 76.6 (#4), Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)
| Benchmark | Kimi K3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1476 | 1421 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1454 | 1374 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 1339 | 993 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1488 | 1423 |
| EQ-Bench Creative Writing | 2082 | — |
Frequently asked questions
Is Kimi K3 better than Mistral Medium 3.5?
Kimi K3 is the stronger model overall, scoring 59.5 to 40.2 on the Noometry Index. Mistral Medium 3.5 costs 2.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Kimi K3's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Kimi K3 or Mistral Medium 3.5?
Mistral Medium 3.5 is cheaper. It lists at $1.50 per million input tokens and $7.50 per million output tokens; Kimi K3 lists at $3 and $15.
Is Kimi K3 or Mistral Medium 3.5 better for coding?
Kimi K3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 61.0 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Kimi K3 does, with 1.05M tokens against 262K.
How many benchmarks do Kimi K3 and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?
20 benchmarks have published results for both models. Kimi K3 has 53 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.