Mistral Medium 3 vs Mixtral 8x22B Instruct
Updated October 21, 2026. 7 benchmarks have a result for both. Coding is ranked on the Vibe Coding Index; every other board is shown as published.
Decision reading
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Mistral Medium 3 has the edge where output tokens cost 3.0x less, and where the context window is larger, 131K against 66K tokens.
- Shared results
- 7
- Mistral Medium 3 only
- 50
- Mixtral 8x22B Instruct only
- 0
- Like-for-like categories
- 5 of 9
Shared results can support a head-to-head reading. Results only one model has describe coverage, not superiority.
Which one for your work
Each card is decided by one number both models carry. Where only one has it, the card says so and makes no call.
Coding
Vibe Coding Index, six public coding benchmarks
No call
Neither has a coding score yet.
One side not measured
Intelligence
AA Intelligence Index
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral Medium 3 leads, 9.0 against 5.7.
Same board, both measured
Web design
Design Arena: websites
No call
Only Mistral Medium 3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1079.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral Medium 3 takes 131K tokens against 66K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral Medium 3 $0.0014, Mixtral 8x22B Instruct $0.0050 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Mistral Medium 3 not benchmarked, Mixtral 8x22B Instruct not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Coding, 25.2 points apart on average over 1 shared benchmark.
- Widest single gap
- LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run): Mistral Medium 3 40.0% against Mixtral 8x22B Instruct 14.8%, 25.2 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Mistral Medium 3 $2.00 against Mixtral 8x22B Instruct $6.00 per million output tokens, 3.0x apart.
- Context window
- Mistral Medium 3 takes 131K tokens, Mixtral 8x22B Instruct 66K.
Benchmark by benchmark
First the score: boards each model leads, per category, where both have a result. Then every board, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale, so compare the two in a row, not one row with another.
| Category | Mistral Medium 3 | Bars | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Coding | 1 | 0 | ||
| Intelligence | 2 | 0 | ||
| Reasoning | 2 | 0 | ||
| Knowledge | 1 | 0 | ||
| General | 1 | 0 | ||
| All shared boards | 7 | 0 |
CodingLike-for-likeSix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index10
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 40.0% | 14.8% | Mistral Medium 3 |
| Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) | 3.8% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: coding | 1385 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: software and IT | 1385 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 34 boards here | |||
IntelligenceLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 9.0 | 5.7 | Mistral Medium 3 |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 134.0 | 122.0 | Mistral Medium 3 |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1 board, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 24.3% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 38 boards here | |||
ReasoningLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index20
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 57.8% | 33.2% | Mistral Medium 3 |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 4.1% | 4.0% | Mistral Medium 3 |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts | 1364 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: expert | 1342 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: hard prompts in English | 1374 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: diagrams | 1155 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: homework | 1165 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 14 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index4 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Math Index | 30.3 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| AIME 2025 (Artificial Analysis run) | 30.3% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: math | 1353 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: mathematical work | 1354 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 9 boards here | |||
KnowledgeLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 76.0% | 53.7% | Mistral Medium 3 |
| LMArena Text: science | 1381 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: medicine and healthcare | 1381 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: legal and government | 1384 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: business and finance | 1352 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 12 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1079 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1024 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1018 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1034 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1083 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1069 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
GeneralLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index10
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| IFBench | 39.3% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Long context reasoning (AA-LCR) | 31.3% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| DTBench | 62.3% | 55.1% | Mistral Medium 3 |
| LMArena Text | 1370 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: instruction following | 1338 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: creative writing | 1343 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision | 1157 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: English | 1385 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: non-English | 1353 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Chinese | 1374 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: German | 1377 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Japanese | 1316 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Korean | 1304 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: French | 1368 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Spanish | 1364 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Russian | 1359 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: Polish | 1371 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: multi-turn | 1384 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: longer queries | 1360 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: writing and language | 1352 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Text: entertainment and media | 1335 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: English | 1172 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: Chinese | 1161 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: reading text | 1154 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: humor | 1145 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: captioning | 1094 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: recognizing things | 1141 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| LMArena Vision: creative writing | 1146 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 18 boards here | |||
Image generationNot comparablePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index0 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Mixtral 8x22B Instruct | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Neither model has a result on 5 boards here | |||
What each workload costs
Three fixed token mixes at each model's listed price, so per-token rates become a bill.
Chat turn
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mistral Medium 3 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Mistral Medium 3 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Mistral Medium 3 costs less
Listed OpenRouter rates, without cache or batch discounts. A workload that does not fit a model's context window would need splitting.
Specification differences
The leading value in a row is marked; a row with a missing value names no leader. Our two rows are marked in red.
| Specification | Mistral Medium 3 | Mistral Mixtral 8x22B Instruct |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral AI | Mistral AI |
| Weights | No public weights listed | Open weights |
| Released | May 7, 2025 | April 17, 2024 |
| Context window | 131K | 66K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.40 | $2.00 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.00 | $6.00 |
| Coding index | Not benchmarked | Not benchmarked |
| Independent measurements behind it | 0 | 0 |
| Cost per solved task | Not computable | Not computable |
| Source | OpenRouter listing | OpenRouter listing |
Questions
Is Mistral Medium 3 better than Mixtral 8x22B Instruct for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Mistral Medium 3 has the edge where output tokens cost 3.0x less, and where the context window is larger, 131K against 66K tokens.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3 or Mixtral 8x22B Instruct?
Mistral Medium 3 costs $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens; Mixtral 8x22B Instruct costs $2.00 and $6.00. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral Medium 3 or Mixtral 8x22B Instruct?
Mistral Medium 3, with 131K tokens against 66K.
How many benchmarks is the Mistral Medium 3 vs Mixtral 8x22B Instruct comparison based on?
7 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 21, 2026. Mistral Medium 3's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Mixtral 8x22B Instruct's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.