The closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3.5 is Gemma 4 31B (free) — comparable intelligence (39.2 vs 39.2); for a cheaper option, Qwen3.7 Max runs $1.25/M vs $1.50/M; for more speed, gpt-oss-120b (free) hits 554 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Gemma 4 31B (free) is the closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3.5, with an Intelligence Index of 39.2 (Mistral Medium 3.5 scores 39.2) at Free per million input tokens.
Yes — Qwen3.7 Max costs $1.25 per million input tokens versus $1.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Mistral Medium 3.5 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.