Is Mistral Medium 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?

Both Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium ship a 128K-token context window.

Is Mistral Medium or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?

Both Mistral Medium 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.

When were Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium released?

Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.

Is Mistral Medium 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?

Both Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium ship a 128K-token context window.

Is Mistral Medium or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?

Both Mistral Medium 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.

When were Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium released?

Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.

Mistral Medium 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.

UpdatedApr 30, 2026

Mistral Medium specs · Phi-3.5 Medium specs

Verdict by category

PriceMistral Medium
Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while Phi-3.5 Medium does not.
Context windowTie
Both ship a 128K-token context window.
BenchmarksTie
No directly comparable public benchmarks are available for both models, check the spec sheets for individual scores.
ModalitiesTie
Both handle text.
OpennessPhi-3.5 Medium
Phi-3.5 Medium ships open weights (MIT); Mistral Medium is API-only.

It's a genuine coin-flip between Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium: 1 category wins each, with the rest tied. Mistral Medium publishes pricing ($2.00 / 1M output tokens) while Phi-3.5 Medium does not. Both ship a 128K-token context window.

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. Phi-3.5 Medium ships open weights (MIT); Mistral Medium is API-only.

Mistral Medium is the newer of the two, released 4 months after Phi-3.5 Medium, which usually means a more recent knowledge cutoff and updated safety post-training. Mistral Medium is usually picked for customer support and chatbots 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

Spec	Mistral Medium	Phi-3.5 Medium
Provider	Mistral	Microsoft
Released	Dec 2024	Aug 2024
Modalities	text	text
Context window	128K tokens	128K tokens
Max output	,	,
Input · 1M	$0.40 / 1M tokens	Pricing not published
Output · 1M	$2.00 / 1M tokens	Pricing not published
Knowledge cutoff	,	,
Open weights	No	Yes (MIT)
API available	Yes	Yes

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$4.20 vs ,
Heavy usage, 1M in / 500k out per day$42.00 vs ,
RAG workload, 5M in / 200k out per day$72.00 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.

Input tokens / dayOutput tokens / dayHorizon

Mistral Medium$0.140
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.

Mistral MediumPhi-3.5 Medium

MMLU,78.9

Pick Mistral Medium if

Mistral Medium fits when…

Mid-tier balance
EU-friendly

Pick Phi-3.5 Medium if

Phi-3.5 Medium fits when…

MIT license
128k context
Strong reasoning at 14B
Self-hosting and on-prem requirements, open weights (MIT).

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 specs Mistral Medium vs Mistral Large 2 Phi-3.5 Medium vs Mistral Large 2

Frequently asked

Is Mistral Medium 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?
Both Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium ship a 128K-token context window.
Is Mistral Medium or Phi-3.5 Medium better for coding?
Both Mistral Medium 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?
Phi-3.5 Medium ships open weights (MIT). Mistral Medium is API-only.
When were Mistral Medium and Phi-3.5 Medium released?
Mistral Medium was released by Mistral on 2024-12-18. Phi-3.5 Medium was released by Microsoft on 2024-08-20.

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