Side-by-side benchmark comparison across agentic, coding, multimodal, knowledge, reasoning, and math workflows.
Step 3.5 Flash is clearly ahead on the aggregate, 66 to 61. The gap is large enough that you do not need to squint at the spreadsheet to see the difference.
Step 3.5 Flash's sharpest advantage is in agentic, where it averages 60.2 against 52.5. The single biggest benchmark swing on the page is MMMU-Pro, 64 to 75. Mistral Large 3 does hit back in multimodal & grounded, so the answer changes if that is the part of the workload you care about most.
Mistral Large 3 is also the more expensive model on tokens at $2.00 input / $6.00 output per 1M tokens, versus $0.10 input / $0.30 output per 1M tokens for Step 3.5 Flash. That is roughly 20.0x on output cost alone. Step 3.5 Flash gives you the larger context window at 256K, compared with 128K for Mistral Large 3.
Pick Step 3.5 Flash if you want the stronger benchmark profile. Mistral Large 3 only becomes the better choice if multimodal & grounded is the priority.
Step 3.5 Flash
60.2
Mistral Large 3
52.5
Step 3.5 Flash
47.1
Mistral Large 3
41
Step 3.5 Flash
66.7
Mistral Large 3
75.5
Step 3.5 Flash
78.3
Mistral Large 3
70.6
Step 3.5 Flash
60.8
Mistral Large 3
57.1
Step 3.5 Flash
87
Mistral Large 3
83
Step 3.5 Flash
82.8
Mistral Large 3
78.8
Step 3.5 Flash
84.5
Mistral Large 3
77.3
Step 3.5 Flash is ahead overall, 66 to 61. The biggest single separator in this matchup is MMMU-Pro, where the scores are 64 and 75.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for knowledge tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.8 versus 57.1. Inside this category, MMLU is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for coding in this comparison, averaging 47.1 versus 41. Inside this category, HumanEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for math in this comparison, averaging 84.5 versus 77.3. Inside this category, AIME 2023 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for reasoning in this comparison, averaging 78.3 versus 70.6. Inside this category, MuSR is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for agentic tasks in this comparison, averaging 60.2 versus 52.5. Inside this category, Terminal-Bench 2.0 is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Mistral Large 3 has the edge for multimodal and grounded tasks in this comparison, averaging 75.5 versus 66.7. Inside this category, MMMU-Pro is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for instruction following in this comparison, averaging 87 versus 83. Inside this category, IFEval is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
Step 3.5 Flash has the edge for multilingual tasks in this comparison, averaging 82.8 versus 78.8. Inside this category, MGSM is the benchmark that creates the most daylight between them.
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