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Comparison · 3 models · Updated Oct 4, 2026

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Qwen3 Max

Claude Haiku 4.5 comes out ahead, 58 to 55 and 50 on our weighted score, and it is the cheaper option too.

  1. Mistral AI

    Mistral Medium 3.5

    Released Apr 29, 2026

    55/100
    • ECI141.4
    • Price$1.50 / $7.50
    • Context262K
    Full specs Remove Mistral Medium 3.5
  2. Our pick

    Anthropic

    Claude Haiku 4.5

    Released Oct 15, 2025

    58/100
    • ECI142.4
    • Price$1.00 / $5.00
    • Context200K
    Full specs Remove Claude Haiku 4.5

  3. Alibaba (Qwen)

    Qwen3 Max

    Released Sep 23, 2025

    50/100
    • ECI142.4
    • Price$1.20 / $6.00
    • Context262K
    Full specs Remove Qwen3 Max
01 — Verdict

Claude Haiku 4.5 is our pick

Claude Haiku 4.5 is the better all-round choice, scoring 58/100 against Mistral Medium 3.5 (55) and Qwen3 Max (50). It leads on price and inputs & features. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

  • CapabilityClaude Haiku 4.5Capabilities Index (ECI): Claude Haiku 4.5 142.4 · Qwen3 Max 142.4 · Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4
  • Lowest priceClaude Haiku 4.5Claude Haiku 4.5 $2.00 · Qwen3 Max $2.40 · Mistral Medium 3.5 $3.00 per 1M tokens (3:1 blend)
  • Longest contextMistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3 MaxMistral Medium 3.5 262,144 · Qwen3 Max 262,144 · Claude Haiku 4.5 200,000 tokens
  • Widest inputsClaude Haiku 4.5Mistral Medium 3.5: Text, Images · Claude Haiku 4.5: Text, Images, PDFs · Qwen3 Max: Text
  • Self-hostingMistral Medium 3.5Publishes downloadable weights
How the score is built
MeasureWeightMistral Medium 3.5Claude Haiku 4.5Qwen3 Max
CapabilityCapabilities Index (ECI)50%676968
Price25%273632
Inputs & features15%708025
Context window10%373237
Overall100%55/10058/10050/100
02 — Side by side

Every spec in one table

Highlighted cells lead their row. Dashes mean the data is not published.

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Qwen3 Max specifications side by side
SpecificationMistral Medium 3.5Mistral AIClaude Haiku 4.5AnthropicQwen3 MaxAlibaba (Qwen)
Capability
Capabilities Index (ECI)141.4142.4 (best)142.4
ECI rank#95 of 148#90 of 148 (best)#91 of 148
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions—71.2%72.6% (best)
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Research-level mathematics——19.0%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics—66.7%73.3% (best)
SimpleQA VerifiedShort factual questions—13.2%48.8% (best)
Price per million tokens
Input$1.50$1.00 (best)$1.20
Output$7.50$5.00 (best)$6.00
Cached input$0.15$0.10 (best)—
Blended (3:1)$3.00$2.00 (best)$2.40
Long-context rateSame rateSame rateSame rate
Price sourceOfficial Mistral APIOfficial Anthropic APIOfficial Alibaba API
Limits
Context window262,144 tokens (best)200,000 tokens262,144 tokens (best)
Max output262,144 tokens (best)64,000 tokens65,536 tokens
Inputs and features
TextYesYesYes
ImagesYesYesNo
PDFsNoYesNo
AudioNoNoNo
VideoNoNoNo
ReasoningYeshighYesNo
Tool callingYesYesYes
Structured outputYesYesNo
Availability
WeightsOpenProprietaryProprietary
API model IDmistral-medium-2604claude-haiku-4-5qwen3-max
API providers1234 (best)16
ReleasedApr 29, 2026Oct 15, 2025Sep 23, 2025
Knowledge cutoff—Feb 28, 2025Apr 2025
03 — Cost

What would a month cost?

Enter your expected volume in millions of tokens. List prices only; caching and batch discounts would lower these.

  • Mistral Medium 3.5$30.00
  • Claude Haiku 4.5$20.00
  • Qwen3 Max$24.00
04 — Questions

Which should you choose?

Which is better: Mistral Medium 3.5, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen3 Max?

Claude Haiku 4.5 is the better all-round choice, scoring 58/100 against Mistral Medium 3.5 (55) and Qwen3 Max (50). It leads on price and inputs & features. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Qwen3 Max?

Claude Haiku 4.5 is cheaper at $1.00 input / $5.00 output per million tokens (official Anthropic API price). Qwen3 Max costs $1.20 input / $6.00 output per million tokens (official Alibaba API price); Mistral Medium 3.5 costs $1.50 input / $7.50 output per million tokens (official Mistral API price). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $2.00 per million tokens for Claude Haiku 4.5 versus $2.40 for Qwen3 Max (1.2× as much) and $3.00 for Mistral Medium 3.5 (1.5× as much).

Which scores higher on benchmarks?

Claude Haiku 4.5 scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Claude Haiku 4.5 142.4 (#90 of 148), Qwen3 Max 142.4 (#91 of 148) and Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4 (#95 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (139.5–144.3 vs 140.0–144.6), so treat the gap as small.

Which is better for coding?

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Mistral Medium 3.5, Claude Haiku 4.5 and Qwen3 Max yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Claude Haiku 4.5 leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. All three support tool calling for agent workflows.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3 Max have the largest context windows (262,144 and 262,144 tokens), against 200,000 for Claude Haiku 4.5. Maximum output per response: Mistral Medium 3.5 up to 262,144, Claude Haiku 4.5 up to 64,000, Qwen3 Max up to 65,536 tokens.

Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?

Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts text and images; Claude Haiku 4.5 accepts text, images and PDFs; Qwen3 Max accepts text. Claude Haiku 4.5 handles the widest range of inputs.

Are any of these open source?

Mistral Medium 3.5 publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; Claude Haiku 4.5 and Qwen3 Max is proprietary.

Which is newer?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the newest, released Apr 29, 2026. Claude Haiku 4.5 came out Oct 15, 2025; Qwen3 Max came out Sep 23, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: Claude Haiku 4.5 Feb 28, 2025, Qwen3 Max Apr 2025.

How do you decide the winner?

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.

05 — Keep comparing

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