Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
Mistral Medium 3.5 (2026) and Qwen3.5-397B-A17B (2026) are frontier-tier reasoning models from MistralAI and Alibaba. Mistral Medium 3.5 ships a 262k-token context window, while Qwen3.5-397B-A17B ships a 262k-token context window. On MMLU PRO, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B leads by 8 pts. On pricing, Qwen3.5-397B-A17B costs $0.39/1M input tokens versus $1.50/1M for the alternative. This comparison covers specs, pricing, API access, capabilities, benchmarks, input and output token costs, and production fit for coding and agent workloads.
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is ~285% cheaper at $0.39/1M; pay for Mistral Medium 3.5 only for vision-heavy evaluation.
Decision scorecard
Local evidence first| Signal | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.5-397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| Best for | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents | reasoning-heavy apps, multimodal apps, and tool-calling agents |
| Decision fit | Coding, RAG, and Agents | Coding, RAG, and Agents |
| Context window | 262k | 262k |
| Cheapest output | $7.50/1M tokens | $2.34/1M tokens |
| Provider routes | 3 tracked | 4 tracked |
| Shared benchmarks | 4 shared | MMLU PRO leader |
Decision tradeoffs
- Mistral Medium 3.5 holds a shared-benchmark lead on SWE-bench Verified, ahead by 1.4 points.
- Local decision data tags Mistral Medium 3.5 for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
- Qwen3.5-397B-A17B holds a shared-benchmark lead on MMLU PRO, ahead by 8 points.
- Qwen3.5-397B-A17B has the lower cheapest tracked output price at $2.34/1M tokens.
- Qwen3.5-397B-A17B has broader tracked provider coverage for fallback and route flexibility.
- Local decision data tags Qwen3.5-397B-A17B for Coding, RAG, and Agents.
Monthly cost at traffic
Estimate token spend from the cheapest tracked input and output route or tier on this page.
Mistral Medium 3.5
$3,075
Cheapest tracked route/tier: Mistral AI Studio
Qwen3.5-397B-A17B
$897
Cheapest tracked route/tier: OpenRouter
Estimated monthly gap: $2,178. Batch, cache, alternate speed tiers, and negotiated pricing are excluded from this local estimate.
Switch friction
- Provider overlap exists on OpenRouter; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Qwen3.5-397B-A17B is $5.16/1M tokens lower on cheapest tracked output pricing before cache, batch, or negotiated discounts.
- Provider overlap exists on OpenRouter; start route-level A/B tests there.
- Mistral Medium 3.5 is $5.16/1M tokens higher on cheapest tracked output pricing, so quality gains need to justify the spend.
Specs
| Specification | ||
|---|---|---|
| Released | 2026-04-29 | 2026-02-16 |
| Context window | 262k | 262k |
| Parameters | 128B | 397B |
| Architecture | Decoder Only | Mixture of Experts |
| License | Mistral Modified MIT License | Apache 2.0OSI-approved |
| Openness | Open weights | Open source |
| Weights | Available | Available |
| Code | Unknown | Unknown |
| Commercial use | Commercial use: conditional | Commercial use: permitted |
| Knowledge cutoff | - | - |
Pricing and availability
| Pricing attribute | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.5-397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $1.50/1M tokens | $0.39/1M tokens |
| Output price | $7.50/1M tokens | $2.34/1M tokens |
| Providers |
Capabilities
| Capability | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.5-397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| Vision | Yes | Yes |
| Multimodal | Yes | Yes |
| Reasoning | Yes | Yes |
| JSON / Tool use | Yes | Yes |
| Structured outputs | Yes | Yes |
| Code execution | No | No |
| IDE integration | No | No |
| Computer use | No | No |
| Parallel agents | No | No |
Benchmarks
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.5-397B-A17B |
|---|---|---|
| MMLU PRO | 79.8 | 87.8 |
| SWE-bench Verified | 77.6 | 76.2 |
| Google-Proof Q&A | 71.3 | 89.3 |
| τ-bench | 91.4 | 86.7 |
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Last reviewed: 2026-06-29. Data sourced from public model cards and provider documentation.