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Codestral 2 vs Phi-3.5 Medium

A complete head-to-head: pricing, context window, benchmarks, modality coverage, and openness, with a programmatic verdict synthesized from the underlying data.

Updated

Codestral 2 specs · Phi-3.5 Medium specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceCodestral 2

    Codestral 2 publishes pricing ($0.90 / 1M output tokens) while Phi-3.5 Medium does not.

  • Context windowCodestral 2

    Codestral 2 accepts 256K tokens vs 128K, 2.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

  • BenchmarksTie

    No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.

  • ModalitiesTie

    Both handle text.

  • OpennessTie

    Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

On balance Codestral 2 edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Phi-3.5 Medium's 0. Codestral 2 publishes pricing ($0.90 / 1M output tokens) while Phi-3.5 Medium does not. Codestral 2 accepts 256K tokens vs 128K, 2.0× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. Both target the same set of modalities (text), so the deciding factors are price, context, and raw quality. Both ship open weights, self-host either one.

Codestral 2 is the newer of the two, released 5 months after Phi-3.5 Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Codestral 2 is usually picked for code completion and coding llm workloads, while Phi-3.5 Medium sees more deployments in on device and edge deployment. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecCodestral 2Phi-3.5 Medium
ProviderMistralMicrosoft
ReleasedJan 2025Aug 2024
Modalitiestexttext
Context window256K tokens128K tokens
Max output,,
Input · 1M$0.30 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Output · 1M$0.90 / 1M tokensPricing not published
Knowledge cutoff,,
Open weightsYes (Mistral Non-Production License)Yes (MIT)
API availableYesYes

Pricing at scale

What you'd actually pay at typical workloads. Numbers come from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day$2.25 vs ,
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$22.50 vs ,
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$50.40 vs ,

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates). RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: pricing not directly comparable (one or both models are missing public per-token rates).

Price calculator

Estimated spend for the listed models at your usage. Numbers are derived from each model's published per-million-token rates.

  • Codestral 2$0.075
  • Phi-3.5 MediumPricing unavailable

Benchmarks compared

Only sourced numbers. Where a benchmark is missing for one model we show the available value rather than fabricating the other.

Codestral 2Phi-3.5 Medium
  • MMLU,78.9
  • HumanEval92.0
Pick Codestral 2 if

Codestral 2 fits when…

  • Fast inline completion
  • FIM support
  • Self-hostable for IP-sensitive teams
  • Long-context tasks, handles 256K tokens vs 128K for Phi-3.5 Medium.
Pick Phi-3.5 Medium if

Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…

  • MIT license
  • 128k context
  • Strong reasoning at 14B
Don't want either?

Consider Mistral Large 2

Mistral's flagship API model, strong on code and reasoning, EU-friendly hosting.

See Mistral Large 2 specsCodestral 2 vs Mistral Large 2Phi-3.5 Medium vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

  • Is Codestral 2 or Phi-3.5 Medium cheaper?
    Per-token pricing isn't published for at least one of these models, check each model's spec page for current rates.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    Codestral 2 accepts 256K tokens vs 128K for Phi-3.5 Medium.
  • Is Codestral 2 or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?
    Both Codestral 2 and Phi-3.5 Medium are competitive on coding benchmarks. See each model's individual spec page for HumanEval and SWE-bench scores where published. For an opinionated pick, consult our Best LLM for Coding ranking.
  • Are either of these models open source?
    Both ship with open weights. Codestral 2 is licensed under Mistral Non-Production License; Phi-3.5 Medium under MIT.
  • When were Codestral 2 and Phi-3.5 Medium released?
    Codestral 2 was released by Mistral on 2025-01-14. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.
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