Model comparison

Ministral 3B vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 39.6 to 25.6 on the Noometry Index. Ministral 3B costs 75× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

Last verified October 10, 2026. 1 shared benchmarks.

Ministral 3B

Mistral AI

25.6

Rank #336 Confirmed

Mistral Medium 3.5

Mistral AI

39.6

Rank #151 Confirmed

Summary

They share 1 benchmark with published results for both. Ministral 3B scores higher in 1 category and Mistral Medium 3.5 in 2 categories; 3 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
The widest gap is in knowledge, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 39.3 to 10.4.
Ministral 3B is cheaper at $0.04 / $0.04 per million input/output tokens, against $1.50 / $7.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5.
Mistral Medium 3.5 accepts more context: 262K tokens versus 128K.

Side by side

Ministral 3B and Mistral Medium 3.5 specifications
	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Provider	Mistral AI	Mistral AI
Noometry Index	25.6	39.6
Released	2024-10-01	—
Weights	Open	Open
Context window	128K	262K
Max output	128K	210K
Input $ / M tokens	$0.04	$1.50
Output $ / M tokens	$0.04	$7.50
Results tracked	6	22

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Category by category

Coding Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 35.7 (#208)

Coding benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena WebDev	—	1263
LMArena Coding	—	1461

Reasoning Ministral 3B leads

Ministral 3B: 17.7 (#278), Mistral Medium 3.5: 16.6 (#290)

Reasoning benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
Epoch Capabilities Index	118.08	141.42
Kagi LLM Benchmark	—	41.4%
NYT Connections (extended)	—	12.9%
LMArena Hard Prompts	—	1436
DTBench	51.7%	—
LMCA	5.5%	—

Math Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Ministral 3B: 24.5 (#257), Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.4 (#113)

Math benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Math	—	1432
MATH Level 5	14.4%	—

Knowledge Mistral Medium 3.5 leads

Ministral 3B: 10.4 (#297), Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.3 (#123)

Knowledge benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
GPQA Diamond	25.3%	—
Vectara Hallucination Rate	7.3%	—
LMArena Expert	—	1431

Multimodal Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 37.6 (#64)

Multimodal benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Vision	—	1222

Multilingual Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 52.1 (#93)

Multilingual benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Non-English	—	1405
LMArena Chinese	—	1443
LMArena French	—	1448
LMArena German	—	1453
LMArena Korean	—	1387
LMArena Russian	—	1396
LMArena Spanish	—	1406

Instruction Following Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.7 (#87)

Instruction Following benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Instruction Following	—	1414

Long Context Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#101)

Long Context benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Longer Query	—	1414

Writing & Preference Not comparable

Ministral 3B: —, Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.6 (#113)

Writing & Preference benchmarks
Benchmark	Ministral 3B	Mistral Medium 3.5
LMArena Text	—	1421
LMArena Creative Writing	—	1372
EQ-Bench 4	—	993
LMArena Multi-Turn	—	1423

Frequently asked questions

Is Ministral 3B better than Mistral Medium 3.5?

Which is cheaper, Ministral 3B or Mistral Medium 3.5?

Ministral 3B is cheaper. It lists at $0.04 per million input tokens and $0.04 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

Which has the bigger context window?

Mistral Medium 3.5 does, with 262K tokens against 128K.

How many benchmarks do Ministral 3B and Mistral Medium 3.5 share?

1 benchmark has published results for both models. Ministral 3B has 6 scored results on Noometry and Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22.