Mistral Medium 3 vs Pareto 26.9
Mistral Medium 3 costs 3.8x less per output token than Pareto 26.9 ($2.00 vs $7.50 per million). Updated October 22, 2026; no benchmark has tested both models yet.
- Coding
- No data
- Overall
- No data
- Output $/M
- $2.00
- Coding
- No data
- Overall
- No data
- Output $/M
- $7.50
Mistral Medium 3 or Pareto 26.9: which to pick
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding.
Pick Mistral Medium 3 for output tokens 3.8x cheaper ($2.00 vs $7.50 per million).
No benchmark has tested both yet. Mistral Medium 3 has results on LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run), Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) and LMArena Text: coding; Pareto 26.9 has none yet. Compare them on price and context instead.
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
No call
Only Mistral Medium 3 has a Design Arena: websites result, 1079.
Directional only
Long documents
Listed context window
Pareto 26.9
Pareto 26.9 takes 262K tokens against 131K.
Listed by OpenRouter
Everyday cost
1K input + 500 output tokens
Mistral Medium 3
Mistral Medium 3 $0.0014, Pareto 26.9 $0.0063 per turn.
List prices
At a glance
- Coding index
- Mistral Medium 3 not benchmarked, Pareto 26.9 not benchmarked.
- Widest category
- None yet: no category has been tested on both models.
- Widest single gap
- None yet: no benchmark has tested both models.
- Output price
- Mistral Medium 3 $2.00 against Pareto 26.9 $7.50 per million output tokens, 3.8x apart.
- Context window
- Mistral Medium 3 takes 131K tokens, Pareto 26.9 262K.
Benchmark by benchmark
Every board either model has a result on, a category to a fold; bars are each result on a 0 to 100 scale. Only one model is measured on each, so no row names a leader.
CodingDirectional onlySix of these boards feed the Vibe Coding Index4 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | 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 39 boards here | |||
IntelligenceDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index2 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | 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 measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| τ²-Bench Telecom | 24.3% | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 41 boards here | |||
ReasoningDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index7 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | 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 16 boards here | |||
MathDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index4 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | 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 10 boards here | |||
KnowledgeDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index5 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | 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 15 boards here | |||
Web designDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index6 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | Leader |
|---|---|---|---|
| Design Arena: websites | 1079 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: UI components | 1022 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Design Arena: game dev | 1017 | 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 | 1068 | Not measured | Only Mistral Medium 3 measured |
| Neither model has a result on the other 3 boards here | |||
GeneralDirectional onlyPublic boards, shown as published, kept out of the index28 boards measured
| Benchmark | Mistral Medium 3 | Pareto 26.9 | 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 20 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 | Pareto 26.9 |
|---|---|---|
| Maker | Mistral AI | Unbiased |
| Weights | No public weights listed | No public weights listed |
| Released | May 7, 2025 | October 13, 2026 |
| Context window | 131K | 262K |
| Input $/Mtok | $0.40 | $2.50 |
| Output $/Mtok | $2.00 | $7.50 |
| 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 Pareto 26.9 for coding?
Neither model has a coding score yet, so the two cannot be ranked on coding. Pick Mistral Medium 3 for output tokens 3.8x cheaper ($2.00 vs $7.50 per million).
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3 or Pareto 26.9?
Mistral Medium 3 costs $0.40 per million input tokens and $2.00 per million output tokens; Pareto 26.9 costs $2.50 and $7.50. Cost per solved task is known for neither of them.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral Medium 3 or Pareto 26.9?
Pareto 26.9, with 262K tokens against 131K.
Has any benchmark tested both Mistral Medium 3 and Pareto 26.9?
No benchmark has tested both yet. Mistral Medium 3 has results on LiveCodeBench (Artificial Analysis run), Terminal-Bench Hard (Artificial Analysis run) and LMArena Text: coding; Pareto 26.9 has none yet. Compare them on price and context instead. Data as of October 22, 2026.