Mistral Medium 3 alternatives
Match · Updated July 2026
The closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3 is Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct — comparable intelligence (13.6 vs 12.5); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.400/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
Closest match
Cheaper alternatives
minimax-m3
$0.300/M input · 44.4 intel
minimax-m3:batch
$0.150/M input · 44.4 intel
hy3
$0.132/M input · 41.2 intel
nex-n2-pro
$0.250/M input · 41.0 intel
deepseek-v4-flash
$0.140/M input · 40.3 intel
gpt-5.4-mini:batch
$0.375/M input · 40.0 intel
Smarter alternatives
qwen3-coder-30b-a3b-instruct
13.6 intel · $0.070/M
qwen3-next-80b-a3b-instruct
13.7 intel · $0.100/M
ling-2.6-flash
14.1 intel · $0.010/M
solar-pro-3
14.1 intel · $0.150/M
gemini-2.5-flash
14.1 intel · $0.300/M
gemini-2.5-flash:batch
14.1 intel · $0.150/M
Open-source alternatives
kimi-k3
57.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
glm-5.2
51.1 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3
44.4 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
minimax-m3:batch
44.4 intel · open weights · 524K ctx
deepseek-v4-pro
44.3 intel · open weights · 1.0M ctx
kimi-k2.6
44.2 intel · open weights · 262K ctx
Frequently asked
What is the best alternative to Mistral Medium 3?
Qwen3 Coder 30B A3B Instruct is the closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3, with an Intelligence Index of 13.6 (Mistral Medium 3 scores 12.5) at $0.070 per million input tokens.
Is there a cheaper alternative to Mistral Medium 3?
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.400 for Mistral Medium 3, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Is there an open-source alternative to Mistral Medium 3?
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Mistral Medium 3 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.