AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

REBeam 1.0 501B A23B Open vs Mistral Medium 3 Paid

Beam 1.0 501B A23B vs Mistral Medium 3 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

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

REBeam 1.0 501B A23BOpenReflection
$0.25 /M input
$1 /M outputNo per-token fees if you self-host
TypeOpen-weight
Context window1M tokens
MultimodalNo
Self-hostYes
Mistral Medium 3PaidMistral AI
$0.4 /M input
$2 /M outputManaged API (no infra to run)
TypeProprietary
Context window131K tokens
MultimodalYes
Self-hostNo
Choose Beam 1.0 501B A23B 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 Mistral Medium 3 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

Beam 1.0 501B A23B vs Mistral Medium 3 specs

SpecBeam 1.0 501B A23BMistral Medium 3Winner
MakerReflectionMistral AI–
TypeOpen-weightProprietaryREBeam 1.0 501B A23B
Context window1M tokens131K tokensREBeam 1.0 501B A23B
Input price$0.25/M · free self-host$0.4/MREBeam 1.0 501B A23B
Output price$1/M · free self-host$2/MREBeam 1.0 501B A23B
Vision / multimodalNoYesMistral Medium 3
Tool / function callingYesYes= Tie
Self-hostableYesNo (API only)REBeam 1.0 501B A23B
LicenseOpen weightsProprietaryREBeam 1.0 501B A23B

Price gap & when to choose each

2.0×cheaper per output token

Beam 1.0 501B A23B is ~2.0× cheaper than Mistral Medium 3 on output tokens ($1 vs $2 per M tokens).

REChoose Beam 1.0 501B A23B if…
  • You want to self-host or run on your cloud
  • You need the longer 1M context window
  • You prioritize data privacy & control
  • You want the lowest operating costs
  • You are building open or reproducible AI
Choose Mistral Medium 3 if…
  • You want frontier performance through a managed API
  • You value reliability & ecosystem
  • You don't want to manage infrastructure

Feature comparison

CapabilityBeam 1.0 501B A23BMistral Medium 3
Open weights (downloadable)✓✗
Self-hostable✓✗
Runs fully offline✓✗
Vision / multimodal✗✓
Tool / function calling✓✓
1M+ context window✓✗

Benchmarks: Beam 1.0 501B A23B vs Mistral Medium 3

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

Beam 1.0 501B A23B delivers 4.5× more intelligence per dollar.
Beam 1.0 501B A23B
Mistral Medium 3
Intelligence index
30.3
9
Humanity's Last Exam
34.7%
4.1%
Long Context Reasoning
78%
31.3%
SciCode
48.5%
–
Math index
–
30.3
GPQA
–
57.8%
MMLU-Pro
–
76%
LiveCodeBench
–
40%
MATH-500
–
90.7%
AIME
–
44%
AIME 2025
–
30.3%
IFBench
–
39.3%
τ²-Bench
–
24.3%
Terminal-Bench Hard
–
3.8%
Speed
391.1 tok/s
0 tok/s
Latency
0.5s
0s
Intelligence per $
50.5
11.3

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How Beam 1.0 501B A23B and Mistral Medium 3 score

🏆 Best value & openness: Beam 1.0 501B A23B (4.6 vs 3.1 / 5)
CriterionBeam 1.0 501B A23BMistral Medium 3
Cost-efficiency4.54.5
Context window5.03.5
Openness5.01.5
Self-hosting5.01.0
Multimodality3.55.0

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

Beam 1.0 501B A23B Open

Reflection · Open-weight

Beam 1.0 is Reflection's open-weight reasoning model for coding and long-horizon agentic workflows. It uses a sparse mixture-of-experts architecture with 501B total and 23B active parameters per token, and a...

Mistral Medium 3 Paid

Mistral AI · Proprietary

Mistral Medium 3 is a high-performance enterprise-grade language model designed to deliver frontier-level capabilities at significantly reduced operational cost. It balances state-of-the-art reasoning and multimodal performance with 8× lowe

Frequently asked questions

Is Beam 1.0 501B A23B as good as Mistral Medium 3?

Beam 1.0 501B A23B is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Mistral Medium 3 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 Beam 1.0 501B A23B locally?

Yes. Beam 1.0 501B A23B has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Mistral Medium 3 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

How much cheaper is Beam 1.0 501B A23B?

Beam 1.0 501B A23B costs $1/M output vs $2/M for Mistral Medium 3 — roughly 2x cheaper via API, and free if you self-host.

Beam 1.0 501B A23B vs Mistral Medium 3 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose Beam 1.0 501B A23B 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 Mistral Medium 3 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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