MiniMax M3 Open vs 
Mistral Medium 3.5 Open
MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Full 2026 breakdown.
Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai
Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.
MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 specs
| Spec | MiniMax M3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | MiniMax | Mistral AI |
| Type | Open-weight | Open-weight |
| Context window | 1M tokens | 262K tokens |
| Input price | $0.3/M · free self-host | $1.5/M · free self-host |
| Output price | $1.2/M · free self-host | $7.5/M · free self-host |
| Vision / multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Tool / function calling | Yes | Yes |
| Self-hostable | Yes | Yes |
| License | MIT | Apache 2.0 |
Feature comparison
| Capability | MiniMax M3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Open weights (downloadable) | ✓ | ✓ |
| Self-hostable | ✓ | ✓ |
| Runs fully offline | ✓ | ✓ |
| Vision / multimodal | ✓ | ✓ |
| Tool / function calling | ✓ | ✓ |
| 1M+ context window | ✓ | ✗ |
Benchmarks: MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5
Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).
Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.
How MiniMax M3 and Mistral Medium 3.5 score
| Criterion | MiniMax M3 | Mistral Medium 3.5 |
|---|---|---|
| Cost-efficiency | 4.5 | 4.0 |
| Context window | 5.0 | 4.0 |
| Openness | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Self-hosting | 5.0 | 5.0 |
| Multimodality | 5.0 | 5.0 |
Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.
What each model is
MiniMax M3 Open
MiniMax-M3 is a multimodal foundation model from MiniMax. It supports text, image, and video inputs with text output, a 1M-token context window, and is suited for long-horizon agentic work, coding,...
Mistral Medium 3.5 Open
Mistral Medium 3.5 is a dense 128B instruction-following model from Mistral AI. It supports text and image inputs with text output, and is designed for agentic workflows, coding, and complex...
Other models in these families
These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.
Frequently asked questions
MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 — which is cheaper?
MiniMax M3 is cheaper on output ($1.2/M vs $7.5/M).
Which has the larger context window?
MiniMax M3 offers the larger context window (1M tokens).
MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 — which should I pick in 2026?
Choose MiniMax M3 for the lower output price ($1.2/M vs $7.5/M). It also gives you the larger 1M context window.
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