Model comparison

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3-Max

Mistral against Qwen, compared on context, price, and verified benchmark results.

Catalog record checked September 26, 2026Individual provider fields may changeEvidence confidence: Medium — see receipts below

Mistral

Mistral Medium 3.5

Frontier · Open weights

Qwen

Qwen3-Max

Frontier

AI model capability comparison
Specification	Mistral Medium 3.5	Qwen3-Max
Provider
Provider	Mistral	Qwen
Tier
Tier	Frontier	Frontier
Context window
Context window	262K	262K
Max output
Max output	Not verifiedUnverified	Not verifiedUnverified
Input / 1M tokens
Input / 1M tokens	$1.50	Winner: $1.20
Output / 1M tokens
Output / 1M tokens	$7.50	Winner: $6
Weights
Weights	Open	Closed
Parameters
Parameters	128B dense	>1T (proprietary)
Reasoning levels
Reasoning levels	Not verifiedUnverified	low, high, max
Modalities
Modalities	text, image	text
License
License	Modified MIT	Not disclosedUnverified
API model id
API model id	mistral-medium-3-5	qwen3-max
Released
Released	April 28, 2026	September 23, 2025
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)
Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index (2026-09-26)	14.2	Winner: 15.6

Prices are USD per million tokens at standard rates, excluding batch and caching discounts. Bold indicates the better figure where one is objectively better. Values we could not confirm from the provider are shown as “Not verified” rather than estimated.

Benchmark receipts

Where each score comes from, and how far it can be compared across models.

2026-09-26
Artificial Analysis (AA-estimated)
Composite index blending reasoning, knowledge, and coding evals into one 0–100 score.
Comparable with caveatOnly same-version scores are comparable. v4.3.2 was rebaselined (the top score fell from 66 on v4.1.1 to ~58), so v4.1.1 figures must not be compared with v4.3.2 figures — check measuredAt.

Pricing tiers

Mistral Medium 3.5: Mistral first-party API $1.50/$7.50 per MTok; Mistral advertises up to 90% off cached input (exact cached rate not verified). Open weights under a Modified MIT licence. 128B dense.

Qwen3-Max: Model Studio International $1.20/$6.00 per MTok up to 32K input; $2.40/$12 for 32K–128K; $3/$15 for 128K–256K. The qwen3-max alias now equals qwen3-max-2026-01-23. Proprietary, API-only.

FrontierOpen weightsRecord checked September 26, 2026

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the model Mistral calls its new flagship — a 128B dense open-weight model with a 256K context, powering its Vibe remote agents.

Best for

EU-hosted frontier work
Open-weight self-hosting
Mistral Vibe agents

Watch out

Far behind US and Chinese frontier models on the Artificial Analysis index; max output is not published. Check the Modified MIT terms before redistribution.

FrontierRecord checked September 26, 2026

Qwen3-Max

Qwen3-Max is Alibaba's proprietary 1-trillion-parameter API model with multimodal input.

Best for

Agentic coding
Multimodal knowledge work
Long-context via API

Watch out

Max line is proprietary/API-only (no published weights). Per-provider prices differ.

When the cheaper one wins

Qwen3-Max is cheaper on output at $6 per million tokens against $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5 — about 1.3×. Use the cheaper tier for classification, extraction, summarisation, and any task where the expensive model’s extra score does not change the accepted output. The expensive one only pays if your hardest task actually fails on the cheap tier. These are standard-tier API rates, excluding batch and cache discounts.

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Evidence confidence: Medium

How strong and complete the evidence behind this comparison is — not a prediction of which model is better.

Pricing verified on both sides — Input and output rates are verified for both models.
3/5 core specs verified on both sides — Not published for at least one side: max output, reasoning levels.
1 shared named benchmark (scores match) — Measured on: Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index — scores are equivalent, so the benchmark does not separate the pair.
Verified within the last 90 days — Newest catalog check was 2 days ago.
Both models carry source citations — Each side has at least two catalog sources on record.

Source receipts

Each catalog figure was checked against the provider or an independent second source on the date shown.

Mistral Medium 3.5: Mistral docs — Mistral Medium 3.5 (26.04) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Mistral Medium 3.5: Mistral — Vibe remote agents and Mistral Medium 3.5 (accessed 2026-09-26)
Mistral Medium 3.5: Mistral changelog (2026-04-28) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Qwen3-Max: Alibaba Cloud Model Studio pricing (qwen3-max tiers) (accessed 2026-09-26)
Qwen3-Max: Alibaba Cloud — Qwen3-Max: Just Scale It (accessed 2026-09-26)
Qwen3-Max: AI Release Tracker — Qwen3-Max (accessed 2026-08-29)

Related comparisons

Diving deeper on one model? Mistral Medium 3.5 · Qwen3-Max

Common questions

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3-Max

Answered from the verified figures on this page rather than general guidance.

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3-Max cheaper for input?

Qwen3-Max is cheaper at $1.20 per million input tokens, against $1.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5 — roughly 1.3× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Mistral Medium 3.5 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $1.50/$7.50 per MTok; Mistral advertises up to 90% off cached input (exact cached rate not verified). Open weights under a Modified MIT licence. 128B dense. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Model Studio International $1.20/$6.00 per MTok up to 32K input; $2.40/$12 for 32K–128K; $3/$15 for 128K–256K. The qwen3-max alias now equals qwen3-max-2026-01-23. Proprietary, API-only.

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3-Max cheaper for output?

Qwen3-Max is cheaper at $6 per million output tokens, against $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5 — roughly 1.3× the price. Output tokens usually dominate a real bill, so weigh the output rate more heavily than the input rate. These are base rates; Mistral Medium 3.5 has tiered pricing: Mistral first-party API $1.50/$7.50 per MTok; Mistral advertises up to 90% off cached input (exact cached rate not verified). Open weights under a Modified MIT licence. 128B dense. Qwen3-Max has tiered pricing: Model Studio International $1.20/$6.00 per MTok up to 32K input; $2.40/$12 for 32K–128K; $3/$15 for 128K–256K. The qwen3-max alias now equals qwen3-max-2026-01-23. Proprietary, API-only.

Which has the larger context window, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3-Max?

Both accept about 262K tokens of context, so document length will not decide between them.

Should I use Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3-Max?

Both sit in the frontier tier, so the choice usually comes down to price and context rather than capability. Mistral Medium 3.5 suits eu-hosted frontier work; Qwen3-Max suits agentic coding.

Can I self-host Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3-Max?

Mistral Medium 3.5 publishes open weights, but self-hosting and third-party provider access depend on the licence, hardware, serving support, and availability. Qwen3-Max is a closed model whose supported access paths are controlled by its provider.

Next step

Choosing between them

The verified figures that separate this pair, computed from the catalog rather than restated boilerplate.

Input price: Qwen3-Max costs $1.20 per 1M tokens versus $1.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5 — a 1.3x difference at the headline tier.
Deployment: Mistral Medium 3.5 publishes weights you can self-host; the other is API-only.

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