MiniMax M3 vs Mistral Medium 3.5 128B

Pick Mistral Medium 3.5 128B if you want the stronger benchmark profile. MiniMax M3 only becomes the better choice if you want the cheaper token bill or you need the larger 1M context window.

Mistral Medium 3.5 128B has the cleaner provisional overall profile here, landing at 79 versus 76. It is a real lead, but still close enough that category-level strengths matter more than the headline number.

Mistral Medium 3.5 128B's sharpest advantage is in coding, where it averages 77.6 against 67. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is SWE-bench Verified, 80.5% to 77.6%.

Mistral Medium 3.5 128B is also the more expensive model on tokens at $1.50 input / $7.50 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.30 input / $1.20 output per 1M tokens for MiniMax M3. That is roughly 6.3x on output cost alone. Mistral Medium 3.5 128B is the reasoning model in the pair, while MiniMax M3 is not. That usually helps on harder chain-of-thought-heavy tests, but it can also mean more latency and more token spend in real use. MiniMax M3 gives you the larger context window at 1M, compared with 256K for Mistral Medium 3.5 128B.