# Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Sonar

> Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-medium-3-5-vs-sonar
- Last updated: 2026-10-11
- Shared benchmarks: 0

## Summary

- The widest gap is in writing & preference, where Mistral Medium 3.5 leads 58.5 to 52.6.
- Sonar is cheaper at $1 / $1 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.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 has downloadable open weights; the other is API-only.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | Perplexity |
| Noometry Index | 40.2 | 38.5 |
| Rank | 152 | 187 |
| Context | 262K | 128K |
| Input $/M | $1.50 | $1 |
| Output $/M | $7.50 | $1 |
| Weights | Open | Proprietary |

## Coding

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)
- Sonar: 35.7 (#221)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena WebDev | 1264 | — |
| LiveBench Coding | — | 35.1% |
| LMArena Coding | 1461 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)
- Sonar: 21.1 (#227)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 41.4% | — |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 12.9% | — |
| LiveBench Reasoning | — | 46.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1436 | — |
| LiveBench Data Analysis | — | 37.9% |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.35 | — |
| LiveBench | — | 46.9% |

## Math

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)
- Sonar: 33.7 (#200)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Math | — | 41.6% |
| LMArena Math | 1431 | — |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1432 | — |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1223 | — |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1404 | — |
| LMArena Chinese | 1442 | — |
| LMArena French | 1448 | — |
| LMArena German | 1451 | — |
| LMArena Korean | 1385 | — |
| LMArena Russian | 1395 | — |
| LMArena Spanish | 1409 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)
- Sonar: 71.4 (#150)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LiveBench Instruction Following | — | 76.2% |
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1415 | — |

## Long Context

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)
- Sonar: —

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1415 | — |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)
- Sonar: 52.6 (#167)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Sonar |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1421 | — |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1374 | — |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 993 | — |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1423 | — |
| LiveBench Language | — | 44.1% |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Sonar?

Mistral Medium 3.5 is the stronger model overall, scoring 40.2 to 38.5 on the Noometry Index. Sonar costs 3.0× less per token, which makes it the better buy when Mistral Medium 3.5's lead doesn't matter for your workload.

### Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Sonar?

Sonar is cheaper. It lists at $1 per million input tokens and $1 per million output tokens; Mistral Medium 3.5 lists at $1.50 and $7.50.

### Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Sonar better for coding?

They score almost the same on coding (36.0 vs 35.7); test both on your own repository before choosing.

### Which has the bigger context window?

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

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Sonar share?

0 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Sonar has 7.