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Comparison · 3 models · Updated Oct 4, 2026

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3 Max vs Claude Sonnet 4

Mistral Medium 3.5 comes out ahead, 55 to 51 and 50 on our weighted score, though Qwen3 Max is 20% cheaper per token.

  1. Our pick

    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. Alibaba (Qwen)

    Qwen3 Max

    Released Sep 23, 2025

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

  3. Anthropic

    Claude Sonnet 4

    Released May 22, 2025

    51/100
    • ECI141.7
    • Price$3.00 / $15.00
    • Context200K
    Full specs Remove Claude Sonnet 4
01 — Verdict

Mistral Medium 3.5 is our pick

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the better all-round choice, scoring 55/100 against Claude Sonnet 4 (51) and Qwen3 Max (50). Qwen3 Max wins on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

  • CapabilityQwen3 MaxCapabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3 Max 142.4 · Claude Sonnet 4 141.7 · Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4
  • Lowest priceQwen3 MaxQwen3 Max $2.40 · Mistral Medium 3.5 $3.00 · Claude Sonnet 4 $6.00 per 1M tokens (3:1 blend)
  • Longest contextMistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3 MaxMistral Medium 3.5 262,144 · Qwen3 Max 262,144 · Claude Sonnet 4 200,000 tokens
  • Widest inputsClaude Sonnet 4Mistral Medium 3.5: Text, Images · Qwen3 Max: Text · Claude Sonnet 4: Text, Images, PDFs
  • Self-hostingMistral Medium 3.5Publishes downloadable weights
How the score is built
MeasureWeightMistral Medium 3.5Qwen3 MaxClaude Sonnet 4
CapabilityCapabilities Index (ECI)50%676868
Price25%273213
Inputs & features15%702570
Context window10%373732
Overall100%55/10050/10051/100
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 Max vs Claude Sonnet 4 specifications side by side
SpecificationMistral Medium 3.5Mistral AIQwen3 MaxAlibaba (Qwen)Claude Sonnet 4Anthropic
Capability
Capabilities Index (ECI)141.4142.4 (best)141.7
ECI rank#95 of 148#91 of 148 (best)#94 of 148
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions—72.6%79.2% (best)
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Research-level mathematics—19.0%—
OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics—73.3% (best)71.1%
SimpleQA VerifiedShort factual questions—48.8%—
Price per million tokens
Input$1.50$1.20 (best)$3.00
Output$7.50$6.00 (best)$15.00
Cached input$0.15——
Blended (3:1)$3.00$2.40 (best)$6.00
Long-context rateSame rateSame rateSame rate
Price sourceOfficial Mistral APIOfficial Alibaba APIMedian of 9 providers
Limits
Context window262,144 tokens (best)262,144 tokens (best)200,000 tokens
Max output262,144 tokens (best)65,536 tokens64,000 tokens
Inputs and features
TextYesYesYes
ImagesYesNoYes
PDFsNoNoYes
AudioNoNoNo
VideoNoNoNo
ReasoningYeshighNoYes
Tool callingYesYesYes
Structured outputYesNoNo
Availability
WeightsOpenProprietaryProprietary
API model IDmistral-medium-2604qwen3-max—
API providers1216 (best)9
ReleasedApr 29, 2026Sep 23, 2025May 22, 2025
Knowledge cutoff—Apr 2025Mar 31, 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
  • Qwen3 Max$24.00
  • Claude Sonnet 4$60.00
04 — Questions

Which should you choose?

Which is better: Mistral Medium 3.5, Qwen3 Max or Claude Sonnet 4?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the better all-round choice, scoring 55/100 against Claude Sonnet 4 (51) and Qwen3 Max (50). Qwen3 Max wins on price. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5, Qwen3 Max or Claude Sonnet 4?

Qwen3 Max is cheaper at $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); Claude Sonnet 4 costs $3.00 input / $15.00 output per million tokens (median across 9 API providers). At a typical mix of three input tokens to one output token, that is $2.40 per million tokens for Qwen3 Max versus $3.00 for Mistral Medium 3.5 (1.3× as much) and $6.00 for Claude Sonnet 4 (2.5× as much).

Which scores higher on benchmarks?

Qwen3 Max scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Qwen3 Max 142.4 (#91 of 148), Claude Sonnet 4 141.7 (#94 of 148) and Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4 (#95 of 148). The confidence ranges of the top two overlap (140.0–144.6 vs 139.2–142.9), so treat the gap as small.

Which is better for coding?

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Mistral Medium 3.5, Qwen3 Max and Claude Sonnet 4 yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Qwen3 Max 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 Sonnet 4. Maximum output per response: Mistral Medium 3.5 up to 262,144, Qwen3 Max up to 65,536, Claude Sonnet 4 up to 64,000 tokens.

Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?

Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts text and images; Qwen3 Max accepts text; Claude Sonnet 4 accepts text, images and PDFs. Claude Sonnet 4 handles the widest range of inputs.

Are any of these open source?

Mistral Medium 3.5 publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; Qwen3 Max and Claude Sonnet 4 is proprietary.

Which is newer?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the newest, released Apr 29, 2026. Qwen3 Max came out Sep 23, 2025; Claude Sonnet 4 came out May 22, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: Qwen3 Max Apr 2025, Claude Sonnet 4 Mar 31, 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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