Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3 Coder Next
Which is better for the money: Mistral Medium 3.5 by Mistral or Qwen3 Coder Next by Alibaba? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-08-19.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Mistral Medium 3.5 scores 9.1 points higher (30.4 vs 21.3) but costs 3.5× as much to run the benchmark ($883 vs $250; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Mistral Medium 3.5 when you need intelligence above 21.3, and Qwen3 Coder Next when 21.3 is enough.
| Metric | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3 Coder Next | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 30.4 | 21.3 | −29.9% Qwen3 Coder Next is 29.9% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $883.33 | $250.18 | −71.7% Qwen3 Coder Next is 71.7% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.23s | 4.97s | −76.6% Qwen3 Coder Next is 76.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $1.50 / $7.50 | $0.35 / $1.20 | |
| Input modalities | Not reported | Not reported |
Qwen3 Coder Next vs Mistral Medium 3.5: 29.9% less intelligence, 71.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 76.6% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Mistral Medium 3.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Muse Spark 1.2 (xhigh) scores 56.80 for $639.
- Qwen3 Coder Next is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-5.6 Luna (max) scores 52.30 for $172.
Mistral Medium 3.5Qwen3 Coder NextToday's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/mistral-medium-3-5/qwen3-coder-next · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/mistral-medium-3-5/qwen3-coder-next?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill