Kimi K3 (Max) vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Which is better for the money: Kimi K3 (Max) by Kimi or Mistral Medium 3.5 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.

Trade-off

KimiKimi K3 (Max)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 43.60
Total cost: $3658

MistralMistral Medium 3.5Off the frontier

Intelligence: 14.20
Total cost: $1264

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Kimi K3 (Max) scores 29.4 points higher (43.6 vs 14.2) but costs 2.9× as much to run the benchmark ($3658 vs $1264; flagship vs premium cost classes). Pick Kimi K3 (Max) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mistral Medium 3.5.

Metric	Kimi K3 (Max)	Mistral Medium 3.5	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	43.6	14.2	−67.4% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 67.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,658.07	$1,263.80	−65.5% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 65.5% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	63.08s	17.96s	−71.5% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 71.5% faster
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$3.00 / $15.0	$1.50 / $7.50
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Kimi K3 (Max): 67.4% less intelligence, 65.5% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 71.5% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Kimi K3 (Max): what beats it Mistral Medium 3.5: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Kimi K3 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Mistral Medium 3.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Kimi K3 (Max)Mistral Medium 3.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

Compare something else

Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/kimi-k3/mistral-medium-3-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/kimi-k3/mistral-medium-3-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill