Mistral Medium 3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 vs GPT-4.1 mini

GPT-4.1 mini is the better all-round choice, scoring 60/100 against Mistral Medium 3.5 (55) and Mistral Medium 3 (53). It leads on price and context window. Mistral Medium 3.5 wins on capability. The score weighs capability 50%, price 25%, inputs & features 15%, context window 10%.

GPT-4.1 mini is cheaper at $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); 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 $0.70 per million tokens for GPT-4.1 mini versus $0.80 for Mistral Medium 3 (1.1× as much) and $3.00 for Mistral Medium 3.5 (4.3× as much).

Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher on the Capabilities Index (ECI): Mistral Medium 3.5 141.4 (#95 of 148), GPT-4.1 mini 135.0 (#115 of 148) and Mistral Medium 3 134.1 (#117 of 148). Their confidence ranges do not overlap (138.4–143.7 vs 131.2–136.6), so the gap is a real one.

There are no published SWE-bench Verified results for Mistral Medium 3, Mistral Medium 3.5 and GPT-4.1 mini yet, so there is no like-for-like coding score. On overall capability, Mistral Medium 3.5 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 262,144 for Mistral Medium 3.5 and 131,072 for Mistral Medium 3. Maximum output per response: Mistral Medium 3 up to 131,072, Mistral Medium 3.5 up to 262,144, GPT-4.1 mini up to 32,768 tokens.

Mistral Medium 3 accepts text and images; Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts text and images; GPT-4.1 mini accepts text, images and PDFs. GPT-4.1 mini handles the widest range of inputs.

Mistral Medium 3.5 publishes its weights and can be self-hosted; Mistral Medium 3 and GPT-4.1 mini is proprietary.

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the newest, released Apr 29, 2026. Mistral Medium 3 came out May 7, 2025; GPT-4.1 mini came out Apr 14, 2025. Knowledge cutoff: Mistral Medium 3 May 2025, GPT-4.1 mini Apr 2024.

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.