# Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Step 3

> Mistral Medium 3.5 and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.2 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

- Canonical page: https://noometry.com/compare/mistral-medium-3-5-vs-step-3
- Last updated: 2026-10-10
- Shared benchmarks: 17

## Summary

- They share 17 benchmarks with published results for both. Mistral Medium 3.5 scores higher in 7 categories and Step 3 in 2 categories; 9 gaps are clear of the uncertainty.
- The widest gap is in reasoning, where Step 3 leads 28.4 to 17.3.
- The biggest single-benchmark swing is Kagi LLM Benchmark: 41.4% for Mistral Medium 3.5 and 62.3% for Step 3.

## Snapshot

| | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral AI | StepFun |
| Noometry Index | 40.2 | 40.5 |
| Rank | 152 | 149 |
| Context | 262K | — |
| Input $/M | $1.50 | — |
| Output $/M | $7.50 | — |
| Weights | Open | Open |

## Coding

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 36.0 (#213)
- Step 3: 40.1 (#147)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Coding | 1461 | 1367 |
| LMArena WebDev | 1264 | — |

## Reasoning

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 17.3 (#295)
- Step 3: 28.4 (#105)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Kagi LLM Benchmark | 41.4% | 62.3% |
| LMArena Hard Prompts | 1436 | 1355 |
| NYT Connections (extended) | 12.9% | — |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 141.35 | — |

## Math

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 39.1 (#113)
- Step 3: 37.6 (#148)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Math | 1431 | 1366 |

## Knowledge

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 40.0 (#126)
- Step 3: 36.8 (#164)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Expert | 1432 | 1333 |

## Multimodal

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 38.3 (#65)
- Step 3: 35.5 (#86)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Vision | 1223 | 1177 |

## Multilingual

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 51.9 (#100)
- Step 3: 46.3 (#159)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Non-English | 1404 | 1327 |
| LMArena Chinese | 1442 | 1397 |
| LMArena German | 1451 | 1371 |
| LMArena Korean | 1385 | 1269 |
| LMArena Russian | 1395 | 1331 |
| LMArena Spanish | 1409 | 1371 |
| LMArena French | 1448 | — |

## Instruction Following

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 74.6 (#90)
- Step 3: 70.4 (#164)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Instruction Following | 1415 | 1332 |

## Long Context

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 43.2 (#103)
- Step 3: 40.3 (#157)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Longer Query | 1415 | 1326 |

## Writing & Preference

- Mistral Medium 3.5: 58.5 (#117)
- Step 3: 54.3 (#151)

| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Step 3 |
|---|---|---|
| LMArena Text | 1421 | 1350 |
| LMArena Creative Writing | 1374 | 1321 |
| LMArena Multi-Turn | 1423 | 1341 |
| EQ-Bench 4 | 993 | — |

## FAQ

### Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Step 3?

Mistral Medium 3.5 and Step 3 score almost the same on the Noometry Index (40.2 vs 40.5), so choose on price, context window or the category you care about most.

### Is Mistral Medium 3.5 or Step 3 better for coding?

Step 3 scores higher on coding benchmarks: 40.1 versus 36.0 in the Noometry coding category.

### How many benchmarks do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Step 3 share?

17 benchmarks have published results for both models. Mistral Medium 3.5 has 22 scored results on Noometry and Step 3 has 17.