Model comparison
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs o3-mini
Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Last verified . 17 shared benchmarks.
Mistral AISummary
- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher in 6 categories and o3-mini in 2 categories; 5 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in long context, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 43.2 to 33.8.
- o3-mini is cheaper at $1.10 / $4.40 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 200K.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.
Side by side
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini | |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | OpenAI |
| Noometry Index | 39.6 | 36.7 |
| Released | — | 2024-12-20 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |
| Context window | 262K | 200K |
| Max output | 210K | 100K |
| Input $ / M tokens | $1.50 | $1.10 |
| Output $ / M tokens | $7.50 | $4.40 |
| Results tracked | 22 | 51 |
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Category by category
Coding o3-mini leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 35.7 (#208), o3-mini: 41.4 (#116)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1461 | 1378 |
| Aider Polyglot | — | 60.4% |
| LMArena WebDev | 1263 | — |
| SciCode | — | 39.8% |
| GSO | — | 1.3% |
| WeirdML | — | 43.7% |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 82.7% |
| CadEval | — | 54% |
Agentic & Tool Use Not comparable
Mistral Medium 3.5: —, o3-mini: 29.3 (#79)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| Cybench | — | 22.5% |
Reasoning Too close to call
Mistral Medium 3.5: 16.6 (#290), o3-mini: 16.3 (#295)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1436 | 1366 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.42 | 140.35 |
| ARC-AGI-2 | — | 3% |
| SimpleBench | — | 22.8% |
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 41.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 12.9% | — |
| ARC-AGI-1 | — | 34.5% |
| CritPt | — | 0.3% |
| Chess Puzzles | — | 17% |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 89.6% |
| Mystery Game Puzzles | — | 7% |
| DTBench | — | 68.8% |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 70.6% |
| LMCA | — | 19% |
| ForecastBench | — | 59.6 |
| LiveBench | — | 75.9% |
Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.4 (#113), o3-mini: 27.6 (#236)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1432 | 1396 |
| FrontierMath (Tiers 1-3) | — | 18.6% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 | — | 0% |
| OTIS Mock AIME 2024-2025 | — | 76.9% |
| LiveBench Math | — | 77.3% |
| MATH Level 5 | — | 96.5% |
| FrontierMath (Feb 2025 set) | — | 12.4% |
| FrontierMath Tier 4 (v1) | — | 4.2% |
Knowledge Too close to call
Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.3 (#123), o3-mini: 38.3 (#135)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1431 | 1364 |
| GPQA Diamond | — | 77% |
| SimpleQA Verified | — | 15.3% |
| Confabulations | — | 17.9% |
Multimodal Not comparable
Mistral Medium 3.5: 37.6 (#64), o3-mini: —
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1222 | — |
Multilingual Mistral Medium 3.5 leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 52.1 (#93), o3-mini: 45.9 (#159)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1405 | 1319 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1443 | 1379 |
| LMArena French | 1448 | 1333 |
| LMArena German | 1453 | 1303 |
| LMArena Korean | 1387 | 1314 |
| LMArena Russian | 1396 | 1304 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1406 | 1321 |
| LMArena Japanese | — | 1286 |
Instruction Following Too close to call
Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.7 (#87), o3-mini: 75.3 (#67)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1414 | 1338 |
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 84.4% |
Long Context Mistral Medium 3.5 leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#101), o3-mini: 33.8 (#251)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1414 | 1343 |
| Fiction.LiveBench | — | 50% |
Writing & Preference Mistral Medium 3.5 leads
Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.6 (#113), o3-mini: 50.4 (#177)
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | o3-mini |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1421 | 1337 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1372 | 1286 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1423 | 1320 |
| Short-Story Creative Writing | — | 61.7% |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 993 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 50.7% |
Frequently asked questions
Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than o3-mini?
Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 36.7 on the Noometry Index. o3-mini costs 1.6× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or o3-mini?
o3-mini is cheaper. It lists at $1.10 per million input tokens and $4.40 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.
Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or o3-mini better for coding?
o3-mini scores higher on coding benchmarks: 41.4 versus 35.7 in the Noometry coding category.
Which has the bigger context window?
Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 200K.
How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and o3-mini share?
17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and o3-mini has 51.