AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) Open vs GPT-3.5 Turbo Paid

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) vs GPT-3.5 Turbo compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.

GPT-3.5 Turbo — full profile ›

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)OpenMistral AI

$0.75 /M input
$3.75 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host

TypeOpen-weight

Context window262K tokens

MultimodalYes

Self-hostYes

GPT-3.5 TurboPaidOpenAI

$0.5 /M input
$1.5 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)

TypeProprietary

Context window16K tokens

MultimodalNo

Self-hostNo

Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose GPT-3.5 Turbo if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) vs GPT-3.5 Turbo specs

Spec	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)	GPT-3.5 Turbo	Winner
Maker	Mistral AI	OpenAI	–
Type	Open-weight	Proprietary	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)
Context window	262K tokens	16K tokens	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)
Input price	$0.75/M · free self-host	$0.5/M	GPT-3.5 Turbo
Output price	$3.75/M · free self-host	$1.5/M	GPT-3.5 Turbo
Vision / multimodal	Yes	No	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)
Tool / function calling	Yes	Yes	= Tie
Self-hostable	Yes	No (API only)	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)
License	Apache 2.0	Proprietary	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)

Price gap & when to choose each

2.5×cheaper per output token

GPT-3.5 Turbo is ~2.5× cheaper than Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) on output tokens ($1.5 vs $3.75 per M tokens).

Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) if…

You want to self-host or run on your cloud
You need the longer 262K context window
You prioritize data privacy & control
You are building open or reproducible AI

Choose GPT-3.5 Turbo if…

You want frontier performance through a managed API
You want the lower output price
You value reliability & ecosystem
You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

Capability	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)	GPT-3.5 Turbo
Open weights (downloadable)	✓	✗
Self-hostable	✓	✗
Runs fully offline	✓	✗
Vision / multimodal	✓	✗
Tool / function calling	✓	✓
1M+ context window	✗	✗

Benchmarks: Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) vs GPT-3.5 Turbo

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)

GPT-3.5 Turbo

Intelligence index

14.9

5.5

Coding index

46.9

10.7

GPQA

74.8%

29.7%

Humanity's Last Exam

13.8%

–

Long Context Reasoning

69.3%

–

SciCode

40.2%

–

IFBench

68.8%

–

τ²-Bench

94.2%

–

τ-Bench Banking

15.1%

–

Terminal-Bench

50.6%

–

Terminal-Bench Hard

33.3%

–

MMLU-Pro

–

46.2%

MATH-500

–

44.1%

Speed

142.2 tok/s

0 tok/s

Latency

0.74s

Intelligence per $

7.3

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) and GPT-3.5 Turbo score

🏆 Best value & openness: Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) (4.6 vs 2.5 / 5)

Criterion	Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch)	GPT-3.5 Turbo
Cost-efficiency	4.0	4.5
Context window	4.0	2.0
Openness	5.0	1.5
Self-hosting	5.0	1.0
Multimodality	5.0	3.5

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

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) Open

Mistral AI · Open-weight

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...

GPT-3.5 Turbo Paid

OpenAI · Proprietary

GPT-3.5 Turbo is OpenAI's fastest model. It can understand and generate natural language or code, and is optimized for chat and traditional completion tasks. Training data up to Sep 2021.

Other models in these families

These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.

Other variants tracked

Mistral Medium 3.5Mistral Small 4Mistral Small 4 (batch)Mistral Medium 3.1Mistral Medium 3.1 (batch)Mistral Large 3 2512Mistral Large 3 2512 (batch)Devstral 2 2512Mistral Medium 3Mistral Small 3.1 24BMistral Small 3.2 24BMistral LargeMistral Large 2407Mistral Small 3SabaMinistral 3 14B 2512Mixtral 8x22B InstructMinistral 3 8B 2512Ministral 3 8B 2512 (batch)Ministral 3 3B 2512UncensoredCodestral 2508Codestral 2508 (batch)Voxtral Small 24B 2507Mistral Nemo

Frequently asked questions

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) as good as GPT-3.5 Turbo?

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but GPT-3.5 Turbo may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.

Can I run Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) locally?

Yes. Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. GPT-3.5 Turbo is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) vs GPT-3.5 Turbo — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Mistral Medium 3.5 (batch) if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose GPT-3.5 Turbo if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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