The closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3.1 is Nemotron 3 Nano Omni (free) — comparable intelligence (21.4 vs 21.3); for a cheaper option, MiniMax M3 runs $0.300/M vs $0.400/M; for more speed, Mercury 2 hits 590 t/s; and the best open-weight substitute is MiniMax M3.
Nemotron 3 Nano Omni (free) is the closest alternative to Mistral Medium 3.1, with an Intelligence Index of 21.4 (Mistral Medium 3.1 scores 21.3) at Free per million input tokens.
Yes — MiniMax M3 costs $0.300 per million input tokens versus $0.400 for Mistral Medium 3.1, while staying within ~8 points of its Intelligence Index.
MiniMax M3 is the strongest open-weight alternative to Mistral Medium 3.1 — downloadable from Hugging Face and self-hostable, scoring 54.7 on intelligence.