The closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3.5 is Step 3.7 Flash — comparable intelligence (30.3 vs 29.9); for a cheaper option, GPT-5.6 Terra runs $1.25/M vs $1.50/M; and the best open-weight substitute is Kimi K3.
Step 3.7 Flash is the closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3.5, with an Intelligence Index of 30.3 (Mistral Medium 3.5 scores 29.9) at $0.200 per million input tokens.
Yes — GPT-5.6 Terra costs $1.25 per million input tokens versus $1.50 for Mistral Medium 3.5, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
Kimi K3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Mistral Medium 3.5 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 57.1 on intelligence.