Mistral Medium 3 vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 costs 1.3x less per output token than Mistral Medium 3 ($1.56 vs $2.00 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; 6 benchmarks have a result for both.
Mistral Medium 3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Mistral Medium 3 for work measured by Design Arena: websites or Design Arena: UI components, where it leads.
- Shared results
- 6
- Mistral Medium 3 only
- 51
- Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 only
- 2
- Like-for-like categories
- 1 of 9
Only benchmarks that tested both models count toward a pick; a result only one model has is shown but not compared.
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
No call
Only Mistral Medium 3 has a AA Intelligence Index result, 9.0.
Directional only
Web design
Design Arena: websites
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 leads, 1187 against 1079.
Same board, both measured
Long documents
Listed context window
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 takes 1M tokens against 131K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15
Mistral Medium 3 $0.0014, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 $0.0010 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Mistral Medium 3 not benchmarked, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- Web design, 12.1 points apart on average over 6 shared benchmarks.
- Widest single gap
- Design Arena: UI components: Mistral Medium 3 1022 against Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 1175, 19.1 points apart on a 0 to 100 scale.
- Output price
- Mistral Medium 3 $2.00 against Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 $1.56 per million output tokens, 1.3x apart.
- Context window
- Mistral Medium 3 takes 131K tokens, Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 1M.
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 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Ties |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Web design | 0 | 6 | ||
| All shared boards | 0 | 6 |
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index4 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run) | 40.0% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| 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 35 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| AA Intelligence Index | 9.0 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Epoch Capabilities Index | 134.0 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
Agentic workDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index1 board, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 24.3% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 40 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| GPQA Diamond (Artificial Analysis run) | 57.8% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Humanity's Last Exam (Artificial Analysis run) | 4.1% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| 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 15 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index4 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | 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 | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| MMLU Pro (Artificial Analysis run) | 76.0% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| 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 13 boards here | |||
Web designLike-for-likePublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index06
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1079 | 1187 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1022 | 1175 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1017 | 1105 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
| Design Arena: data viz | 1034 | 1135 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
| Design Arena: 3D | 1083 | 1118 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
| Design Arena: all code categories | 1068 | 1166 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
| Design Arena: SVG | Not measured | 1107 | Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 measured |
| Design Arena: ASCII art | Not measured | 1094 | Only Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 1 board here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index28 boards, none shared
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | 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% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| 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 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 | 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
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 costs less
Repository review
50K input + 3K output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 costs less
Agent loop
200K input + 10K output tokens
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 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 | Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral AI | Qwen |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | May 7, 2025 | February 16, 2026 |
| Context window | 131K | 1M |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.40 | $0.26 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.00 | $1.56 |
| 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 Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Mistral Medium 3 for work measured by Design Arena: websites or Design Arena: UI components, where it leads.
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15?
Mistral Medium 3 costs $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens; Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 costs $0.26 and $1.56. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral Medium 3 or Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15?
Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15, with 1M tokens against 131K.
How many benchmarks is the Mistral Medium 3 vs Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15 comparison based on?
6 benchmarks have a result for both models as of October 22, 2026. Mistral Medium 3's coding index rests on 0 independent benchmarks and Qwen3.5 Plus 2026-02-15's on 0. Where only one model has a result, the page says so instead of naming a winner.