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Comparison · 2 models · Updated Oct 4, 2026

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3.5 397B-A17B

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B comes out ahead, 65 to 55 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

    Alibaba (Qwen)

    Qwen3.5 397B-A17B

    Released Feb 15, 2026

    65/100
    • ECI146.7
    • Price$0.60 / $3.60
    • Context262K
    Full specs Remove Qwen3.5 397B-A17B

  3. Add a model

    Make it a three-way comparison.

01 — Verdict

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is our pick

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is the better all-round choice, scoring 65/100 against Mistral Medium 3.5 (55). It leads on capability, price and inputs & features. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

  • CapabilityQwen3.5 397B-A17BCapabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3.5 397B-A17B 146.7 · Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4
  • Lowest priceQwen3.5 397B-A17BQwen3.5 397B-A17B $1.35 · Mistral Medium 3.5 $3.00 per 1M tokens (3:1 blend)
  • Longest contextAbout the sameMistral Medium 3.5 262,144 · Qwen3.5 397B-A17B 262,144 tokens
  • Widest inputsQwen3.5 397B-A17BMistral Medium 3.5: Text, Images · Qwen3.5 397B-A17B: Text, Images, Audio, Video
  • Self-hostingAll open weightsEvery model here can be downloaded and run on your own hardware
How the score is built
MeasureWeightMistral Medium 3.5Qwen3.5 397B-A17B
CapabilityCapabilities Index (ECI)50%6774
Price25%2744
Inputs & features15%7090
Context window10%3737
Overall100%55/10065/100
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 Qwen3.5 397B-A17B specifications side by side
SpecificationMistral Medium 3.5Mistral AIQwen3.5 397B-A17BAlibaba (Qwen)
Capability
Capabilities Index (ECI)141.4146.7 (best)
ECI rank#95 of 148#67 of 148 (best)
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions—86.4%
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Research-level mathematics—31.2%
OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics—88.9%
Price per million tokens
Input$1.50$0.60 (best)
Output$7.50$3.60 (best)
Cached input$0.15—
Blended (3:1)$3.00$1.35 (best)
Long-context rateSame rateSame rate
Price sourceOfficial Mistral APIOfficial Alibaba API
Limits
Context window262,144 tokens262,144 tokens
Max output262,144 tokens (best)65,536 tokens
Inputs and features
TextYesYes
ImagesYesYes
PDFsNoNo
AudioNoYes
VideoNoYes
ReasoningYeshighYes
Tool callingYesYes
Structured outputYesYes
Availability
WeightsOpenOpen
API model IDmistral-medium-2604qwen3.5-397b-a17b
API providers1223 (best)
ReleasedApr 29, 2026Feb 15, 2026
Knowledge cutoff——
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
  • Qwen3.5 397B-A17B$13.20
04 — Questions

Which should you choose?

Which is better: Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is the better all-round choice, scoring 65/100 against Mistral Medium 3.5 (55). It leads on capability, price and inputs & features. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3.5 397B-A17B?

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B is cheaper at $0.60 input / $3.60 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 $1.35 per million tokens for Qwen3.5 397B-A17B versus $3.00 for Mistral Medium 3.5 (2.2× as much).

Which scores higher on benchmarks?

Qwen3.5 397B-A17B scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3.5 397B-A17B 146.7 (#67 of 148) and Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4 (#95 of 148). Their confidence ranges do not overlap (144.8–148.2 vs 138.4–143.7), so the gap is a real one.

Which is better for coding?

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B leads, which tends to carry over to coding, but test on your own codebase. Both support tool calling for agent workflows.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3.5 397B-A17B share the same 262,144-token context window. Maximum output per response: Mistral Medium 3.5 up to 262,144, Qwen3.5 397B-A17B up to 65,536 tokens.

Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?

Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts text and images; Qwen3.5 397B-A17B accepts text, images, audio and video. Qwen3.5 397B-A17B handles the widest range of inputs.

Are any of these open source?

Yes, both publish their weights, so you can self-host them.

Which is newer?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the newest, released Apr 29, 2026. Qwen3.5 397B-A17B came out Feb 15, 2026.

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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