Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Mistral Small 3
Pick up to 3 models · pricing, context and capabilities · simulate your product cost
Data updated on September 30, 2026· 217 models
Mistral Medium 3.5 is a dense 128B instruction-following model from Mistral AI.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- Input
- Output
- Context
- ▲262 K tokens
- Max output
- ▲210 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- $1.50
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- $7.50
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- —
- Batch (input / output)
- $0.750 / $3.75
- Tool calling
- Yes
- Released
- ▲05/01/2026
- Knowledge cutoff
- —
- API id
- mistralai/mistral-medium-3-5
Mistral Small 3 is a 24B-parameter language model optimized for low-latency performance across common AI tasks.
- Reasoning estimated
- Speed estimated
- ▲
- Input
- Output
- Context
- 33 K tokens
- Max output
- 16 K
- Input, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.050
- Output, $ per 1M tokens
- ▲$0.080
- Cache read, $ per 1M
- —
- Batch (input / output)
- —
- Tool calling
- No
- Released
- 01/30/2025
- Knowledge cutoff
- —
- API id
- mistralai/mistral-small-24b-instruct-2501
Which is the better API choice: Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Mistral Small 3?
- Mistral Small 3: cheapest input (97% less than Mistral Medium 3.5)
- Mistral Small 3: cheapest output
- Mistral Medium 3.5: largest context (262 K)
- Mistral Medium 3.5: the newest (05/01/2026)
- Mistral Small 3: the fastest (estimated)
Mistral Small 3 costs 97% less on input and 99% less on output than Mistral Medium 3.5 ($0.050 / $0.080 versus $1.50 / $7.50 per million tokens). Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context (262 K). On capabilities, Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts images. Mistral Medium 3.5 offers a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
What would your product cost?
Estimate the monthly cost with your app's real volume. List prices, no cache or batch discounts.
With Mistral Small 3 you save $51.43 a month versus Mistral Medium 3.5 (98% less).
The 6 cheapest for this scenario (chat, last 12 months)
- 1Lyria 3 Pro Preview Google$0.00
- 2Lyria 3 Clip Preview Google$0.00
- 3Qwen3.7 Flash Qwen$0.97
- 4DeepSeek V4 Flash 0731 DeepSeek$1.55
- 5Ministral 3 3B 2512 Mistral$1.90
- 6Qwen3.5-Flash Qwen$2.02
Paste your prompt: tokens and cost per model
Rough estimate (about 4 characters per token). Nothing is sent to any server.
Cost of sending it 1,000 times (input only)
- 1Mistral Small 3 Mistral$0.004
- 2Mistral Medium 3.5 Mistral$0.114
- 3Claude Sonnet 5.5 Anthropic$0.152
- 4Claude Sonnet 5 Anthropic$0.152
- 5Claude Opus 5.5 Anthropic$0.304
- 6Claude Opus 5 Anthropic$0.380
- 7Claude Fable 5.1 Anthropic$0.760
- 8Claude Fable 5 Anthropic$0.760
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Frequently asked questions
Which is the better API choice: Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 costs 97% less on input and 99% less on output than Mistral Medium 3.5 ($0.050 / $0.080 versus $1.50 / $7.50 per million tokens). Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context (262 K). On capabilities, Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts images. Mistral Medium 3.5 offers a batch tier at half price for jobs that do not need an immediate answer.
Which is cheaper: Mistral Medium 3.5 and Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Small 3 is cheaper: $0.050 per million input tokens and $0.080 per million output tokens, versus $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
Which has more context: Mistral Medium 3.5 and Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts 262 K tokens of context; Mistral Small 3 accepts 33 K.
Which is newer: Mistral Medium 3.5 and Mistral Small 3?
Mistral Medium 3.5 was released on 05/01/2026; Mistral Small 3 on 01/30/2025.
What would 10,000 requests a month cost with Mistral Medium 3.5 and Mistral Small 3?
With 1,500 input and 400 output tokens per request: Mistral Medium 3.5: $52.50; Mistral Small 3: $1.07 a month, at list price.
Where do the prices come from and how often are they updated?
From the public catalogs of OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM, which publish each provider's list prices. They sync once a day and the last update date is shown above the comparison.
What does price per million tokens mean?
It is what the provider charges per million tokens you send (input) or the model generates (output). A token is roughly 4 characters. Output almost always costs more than input.
Sources: OpenRouter, models.dev and LiteLLM. Prices in USD per million tokens, list price, no volume discounts. Prompt tokens are an estimate; each provider's tokenizer may differ.