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  5. Mistral Medium 3.1vsQwen3 Max Thinking
Updated Feb 2026

Mistral Medium 3.1vsQwen3 Max Thinking

Mistral Medium 3.1 is cheaper than Qwen3 Max Thinking at $0.4/M vs $1.2/M input tokens.

Mistral Medium 3.1 and Qwen3 Max Thinking compared across 54 shared prompts
SpecMistral Medium 3.1Qwen3 Max Thinking
Input price$0.4/M tokens$1.2/M tokens
Output price$2/M tokens$6/M tokens
Context window131K tokens262K tokens
Weights—Closed
Free API (OpenRouter)NoNo
ReleasedAug 2025Feb 2026
Side by side

Same prompt, both answers

Opening lines from 6 of the 54 prompts both answered. Formatting stripped, words untouched.

Generate a Stand-Up Routine

Write a 3-minute stand-up comedy routine that isn't based on puns.

Mistral Medium 3.1746 words
"Adulting: A User’s Manual (That No One Gave Me)" (Casual, conversational tone—like you’re telling a story to friends at a bar.) So, I turned 30 this year. Which, by the way, is just old enough to realize that no one actually knows what they’re doing. We’re all just winging it and hoping the Wi-Fi stays strong.
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Qwen3 Max Thinking508 words
(Lights up. Comedian walks to mic, adjusts it, takes a breath. Smiles warmly.) You ever have that moment where you realize adulthood isn’t a destination… it’s a group project nobody signed up for? (Beat) I tried assembly line “adulting” this week. Swedish bookshelf. You know the one. Box says “Easy Assembly!” Lies.
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Realistic AI Interview

Simulate a fake interview with Steve Jobs in 2025 about the future of AI.

Mistral Medium 3.1831 words
Fake Interview with Steve Jobs (2025) on the Future of AI Conducted by Tech Insider Magazine – June 2025 Interviewer: "Steve, it’s an honor to have you here—even if it’s just a simulation. A lot has changed since you left us in 2011. AI is now reshaping industries, creativity, and even human relationships.
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Qwen3 Max Thinking668 words
⚠️ IMPORTANT DISCLAIMER *This is an entirely fictional, speculative exercise. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. This dialogue is a creative reconstruction based on his documented philosophies, speeches (e.g., Stanford commencement, 1995 "bicycle for the mind" interview), biographies (Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson), and…
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Estimate Complexity

Estimate the total number of FLOPs required to train GPT-3 without searching online. Explain your reasoning step by step.

Mistral Medium 3.1728 words
Estimating the total number of FLOPs (floating-point operations) required to train a model like GPT-3 from scratch involves breaking down the problem into several key components. Here's a step-by-step reasoning process: Model Parameters GPT-3 is known to have 175 billion parameters. This is our starting point.
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Qwen3 Max Thinking810 words
Step-by-Step Estimation of FLOPs to Train GPT-3 (All values derived from widely known technical details of GPT-3 as reported in OpenAI’s 2020 paper "Language Models are Few-Shot Learners," standard deep-learning compute scaling principles, and foundational ML literature. No internet searches used.)
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Simple 7-Ingredient Recipe

Create a simple recipe for a delicious dish (sweet or savory) using only 7 common pantry ingredients. Include a creative name for the dish…

Mistral Medium 3.1261 words
Dish Name: "Golden Crisp Honey-Nut Banana Bites" A warm, gooey, and crunchy treat that’s quick to make with just 7 pantry staples! Perfect for breakfast, a snack, or dessert. Ingredients (Serves 2-3) 2 ripe bananas (the spottier, the sweeter!)
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Qwen3 Max Thinking288 words
🌰 Pantry Peanut Magic Noodles Sweet, savory, and ready before delivery arrives. No fresh produce, dairy, or meat required. ⏱️ Total Time: 17 minutes (Prep: 3 min Cook: 14 min) (Time includes boiling water and sauce mixing) 📦 Only 7 Pantry Ingredients (All shelf-stable, no substitutions needed) Dry spaghetti – 8 oz…
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Character Voice Test

Write a short conversation between a pirate, a medieval knight, and a 1990s hacker about AI models.

Mistral Medium 3.1384 words
Title: The Tavern of Anachronisms Setting: A dimly lit tavern where time and space don’t quite make sense. A grizzled pirate, a stoic knight in dented armor, and a hacker in a neon "CYBERPUNK 2077" t-shirt sit around a table littered with tankards, a laptop, and a suspiciously glowing orb.
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Qwen3 Max Thinking294 words
Setting: A misty, anachronistic crossroads. A glowing laptop rests on a weathered barrel. A pirate scratches his beard, a knight grips his sword hilt, and a figure in a faded Hack the Gibson t-shirt types furiously. Pirate: Arrr! What devilry be this glowing slate? Can it chart a course to buried treasure?
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Michelin Star Recipe Design

Design an innovative recipe for a multi-component dish worthy of a Michelin 3-star restaurant. The recipe should feature an unusual…

Mistral Medium 3.11,021 words
Dish Title: "Ethereal Forest: Porcini-Infused Venison with Black Garlic Miso, Fermented Plum Gelée, and Smoked Bone Marrow Custard" Conceptual Narrative: This dish is a poetic homage to the transience of autumn—where the earthy depth of the forest floor meets the fleeting sweetness of overripe fruit.
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Qwen3 Max Thinking991 words
🌊 ARCTIC DAWN 🌊 A Michelin 3-Star Composition by Chef Élise Valère "Where the ice remembers the sea." 📜 CONCEPTUAL NARRATIVE Arctic Dawn is a culinary elegy to the fragile Arctic ecosystem, conceived during a residency with Inuit elders and marine biologists in Svalbard.
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Our Verdict
Qwen3 Max Thinking
Qwen3 Max Thinking
Mistral Medium 3.1
Mistral Medium 3.1Runner-up

Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Qwen3 Max Thinking has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.

Mistral Medium 3.1 costs 3.0x less per token.

Slight edge

Reviewing agent-written code?See a Brief PR report

API pricing

Cost per 1M tokens

Mistral Medium 3.1
Input
$0.40
3.0× cheaper
Output
$2.00
3.0× cheaper
Qwen3 Max Thinking
Input
$1.20
Output
$6.00

Mistral Medium 3.1 is cheaper on both: 3.0× input, 3.0× output.

Where to run it

2 hosts

Mistral Medium 3.11 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Mistral$0.40 in·$2.00 out·131k·96.5% up
Qwen3 Max Thinking1 host
HostInOutContextUptime
Alibaba Cloud$0.78 in·$3.90 out·262k·100% up

Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 21 Sep 2026.

Writing DNA

Style Comparison

Similarity
67%

Qwen3 Max Thinking uses 3.1x more emoji

Mistral Medium 3.1
Qwen3 Max Thinking
54%Vocabulary63%
21wSentence Length14w
0.43Hedging0.23
10.3Bold4.5
5.7Lists2.9
0.72Emoji2.26
1.03Headings0.80
0.14Transitions0.06
Based on 28 + 27 text responses
Research

What we learned reading every model

FAQ

Common questions

Mistral Medium 3.1 is developed by Mistral AI while Qwen3 Max Thinking is developed by Qwen. Mistral Medium 3.1 has a 131K token context window vs Qwen3 Max Thinking's 262K. You can compare their actual outputs across 54 challenges on Rival to see how they differ in practice.

It depends on your use case. Mistral Medium 3.1 and Qwen3 Max Thinking each have strengths in different areas. Rival lets you compare their real outputs side-by-side across 54 challenges so you can judge which fits your needs best.

Mistral Medium 3.1 costs $0.4/M input tokens and Qwen3 Max Thinking costs $1.2/M input tokens. Mistral Medium 3.1 is $0.80/M cheaper per input. Check their side-by-side outputs on Rival to see if the price difference is justified by quality.

This page shows a side-by-side comparison of Mistral Medium 3.1 and Qwen3 Max Thinking across shared challenges. You can vote on which model produced the better output in a blind duel. Browsing and voting are free. No account is needed to look; signing in only saves your votes and likes.

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Model pages

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