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GPT-5 mini vs Mistral Medium

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

Updated

GPT-5 mini specs · Mistral Medium specs
Verdict by category
  • PriceTie

    Both land near $2.00 / 1M output tokens, call it a wash on cost.

  • Context windowGPT-5 mini

    GPT-5 mini accepts 400K tokens vs 128K, 3.1× 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.

  • ModalitiesGPT-5 mini

    GPT-5 mini supports 3 modalities (text, vision, audio) vs 1 for Mistral Medium.

  • OpennessTie

    Both are closed-weight, API-only.

On balance GPT-5 mini edges ahead, winning 2 of 5 categories against Mistral Medium's 0. Both land near $2.00 / 1M output tokens, call it a wash on cost. GPT-5 mini accepts 400K tokens vs 128K, 3.1× the room for long documents and codebases.

No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores. They differ in modality coverage, GPT-5 mini handles text, vision, audio while Mistral Medium handles text, which can be the deciding factor before you even look at benchmarks. Both are closed-weight, API-only.

GPT-5 mini is the newer of the two, released 8 months after Mistral Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. GPT-5 mini is usually picked for code completion and customer support workloads, while Mistral Medium sees more deployments in customer support and chatbots. If pricing matters more than every last benchmark point, run the numbers in the calculator below before committing.

Side-by-side specs

SpecGPT-5 miniMistral Medium
ProviderOpenAIMistral
ReleasedAug 2025Dec 2024
Modalitiestext, vision, audiotext
Context window400K tokens128K tokens
Max output128K tokens,
Input · 1M$0.25 / 1M tokens$0.40 / 1M tokens
Output · 1M$2.00 / 1M tokens$2.00 / 1M tokens
Knowledge cutoff2024-09,
Open weightsNoNo
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$3.75 vs $4.20
  • Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$37.50 vs $42.00
  • RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$49.50 vs $72.00

Light usage, 100k in / 50k out per day: $3.75 vs $4.20 per month, model A comes out ahead. Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day: $37.50 vs $42.00 per month, model A comes out ahead. RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day: $49.50 vs $72.00 per month, model A comes out ahead.

Price calculator

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

  • GPT-5 mini$0.125
  • Mistral Medium$0.140

Benchmarks compared

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

Benchmark scores not yet available. We only publish numbers we can source from official model cards or independent leaderboards, see methodology.
Pick GPT-5 mini if

GPT-5 mini fits when…

  • Excellent price-quality ratio for production workloads
  • Fast first-token latency
  • Same tool-use API surface as flagship
  • Long-context tasks, handles 400K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Medium.
  • Multimodal needs covering vision, audio.
Pick Mistral Medium if

Mistral Medium fits when…

  • Mid-tier balance
  • EU-friendly
Don't want either?

Consider GPT-5.5

OpenAI's mid-cycle GPT-5 refresh, improved reasoning, tool use, and multimodal grounding over the 2025 launch.

See GPT-5.5 specsGPT-5 mini vs GPT-5.5Mistral Medium vs GPT-5.5

Frequently asked

  • Is GPT-5 mini or Mistral Medium cheaper?
    Both GPT-5 mini and Mistral Medium are priced equivalently at $2.00 / 1M tokens per million output tokens.
  • Which has the larger context window?
    GPT-5 mini accepts 400K tokens vs 128K for Mistral Medium.
  • Is GPT-5 mini or Mistral Medium better for coding?
    Both GPT-5 mini and Mistral 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?
    Neither model ships open weights, both are accessible only via their respective providers' APIs.
  • When were GPT-5 mini and Mistral Medium released?
    GPT-5 mini was released by OpenAI on 2025-08-07. Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18.
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