GPT-4.1 mini vs Qwen3 8B vs Mistral Medium 3

GPT-4.1 mini is the better all-round choice, scoring 60/100 against Qwen3 8B (56) and Mistral Medium 3 (53). It leads on inputs & features and context window. Qwen3 8B wins on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Qwen3 8B is cheaper at $0.18 input / $0.70 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price). GPT-4.1 mini costs $0.40 input / $1.60 output per million tokens (official OpenAI API price); Mistral Medium 3 costs $0.40 input / $2.00 output per million tokens (official Mistral API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $0.31 per million tokens for Qwen3 8B versus $0.70 for GPT-4.1 mini (2.3× as much) and $0.80 for Mistral Medium 3 (2.6× as much).

Qwen3 8B scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3 8B 136.2 (#113 of 148), GPT-4.1 mini 135.0 (#115 of 148) and Mistral Medium 3 134.1 (#117 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (129.7–138.1 vs 131.2–136.6), so treat the gap as small. On individual benchmarks: GPQA Diamond — GPT-4.1 mini 65.9%, Mistral Medium 3 59.5%, Qwen3 8B 56.8%; OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025 — Qwen3 8B 56.1%, GPT-4.1 mini 44.7%, Mistral Medium 3 32.2%.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for GPT-4.1 mini, Qwen3 8B and Mistral Medium 3 yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3 8B 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 Qwen3 8B and 131,072 for Mistral Medium 3. Maximum output per response: GPT-4.1 mini up to 32,768, Qwen3 8B up to 8,192, Mistral Medium 3 up to 131,072 tokens.

GPT-4.1 mini accepts text, images and PDFs; Qwen3 8B accepts text; Mistral Medium 3 accepts text and images. GPT-4.1 mini handles the widest range of inputs.

Qwen3 8B publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; GPT-4.1 mini and Mistral Medium 3 is proprietary.

Mistral Medium 3 is the newest, released May 7, 2025. Qwen3 8B came out Apr 28, 2025; GPT-4.1 mini came out Apr 14, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: GPT-4.1 mini Apr 2024, Qwen3 8B Apr 2025, Mistral Medium 3 May 2025.

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 Oct 4, 2026.