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Comparison · 3 models · Updated Oct 4, 2026

Qwen3 Max vs Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Mistral Medium 3.5

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

  1. Alibaba (Qwen)

    Qwen3 Max

    Released Sep 23, 2025

    50/100
    • ECI142.4
    • Price$1.20 / $6.00
    • Context262K
    Full specs Remove Qwen3 Max
  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. 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
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 contextQwen3 Max and Mistral Medium 3.5Qwen3 Max 262,144 · Mistral Medium 3.5 262,144 · Claude Haiku 4.5 200,000 tokens
  • Widest inputsClaude Haiku 4.5Qwen3 Max: Text · Claude Haiku 4.5: Text, Images, PDFs · Mistral Medium 3.5: Text, Images
  • Self-hostingMistral Medium 3.5Publishes downloadable weights
How the score is built
MeasureWeightQwen3 MaxClaude Haiku 4.5Mistral Medium 3.5
CapabilityCapabilities Index (ECI)50%686967
Price25%323627
Inputs & features15%258070
Context window10%373237
Overall100%50/10058/10055/100
02 — Side by side

Every spec in one table

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

Qwen3 Max vs Claude Haiku 4.5 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 specifications side by side
SpecificationQwen3 MaxAlibaba (Qwen)Claude Haiku 4.5AnthropicMistral Medium 3.5Mistral AI
Capability
Capabilities Index (ECI)142.4142.4 (best)141.4
ECI rank#91 of 148#90 of 148 (best)#95 of 148
GPQA DiamondGraduate-level science questions72.6% (best)71.2%—
FrontierMath Tiers 1–3Research-level mathematics19.0%——
OTIS Mock AIME 2024–2025Competition mathematics73.3% (best)66.7%—
SimpleQA VerifiedShort factual questions48.8% (best)13.2%—
Price per million tokens
Input$1.20$1.00 (best)$1.50
Output$6.00$5.00 (best)$7.50
Cached input—$0.10 (best)$0.15
Blended (3:1)$2.40$2.00 (best)$3.00
Long-context rateSame rateSame rateSame rate
Price sourceOfficial Alibaba APIOfficial Anthropic APIOfficial Mistral API
Limits
Context window262,144 tokens (best)200,000 tokens262,144 tokens (best)
Max output65,536 tokens64,000 tokens262,144 tokens (best)
Inputs and features
TextYesYesYes
ImagesNoYesYes
PDFsNoYesNo
AudioNoNoNo
VideoNoNoNo
ReasoningNoYesYeshigh
Tool callingYesYesYes
Structured outputNoYesYes
Availability
WeightsProprietaryProprietaryOpen
API model IDqwen3-maxclaude-haiku-4-5mistral-medium-2604
API providers1634 (best)12
ReleasedSep 23, 2025Oct 15, 2025Apr 29, 2026
Knowledge cutoffApr 2025Feb 28, 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.

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

Which should you choose?

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

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, Qwen3 Max, Claude Haiku 4.5 or Mistral Medium 3.5?

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 Qwen3 Max, Claude Haiku 4.5 and Mistral Medium 3.5 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?

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

Which can read images, PDFs, audio or video?

Qwen3 Max accepts text; Claude Haiku 4.5 accepts text, images and PDFs; Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts text and images. 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; Qwen3 Max and Claude Haiku 4.5 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: Qwen3 Max Apr 2025, Claude Haiku 4.5 Feb 28, 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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