Mistral Medium 3 is cheaper than Step 5 Preview at $0.4/M vs $1/M input tokens.
Whole landing page for a startup that reads your face. It renders or it doesn't.
Which answer wins?
Five-year LBO on a fictional HVAC business. Returns first, then the sensitivities.
Mistral Medium 3: 1. Year-by-Year Financial Projections (FY2026–FY2030) Year Revenue ($m) EBITDA ($m) EBITDA Margin Cash Interest ($m) Cash Taxes ($m) Capex ($m) ΔNWC ($m) Free Cash Flow ($m) Term Loan Ending ($m) Mezz Ending ($m) 2026 972.0 136.1 14.0% 57.6 19.6 29.2 4.4 25.3 468.0 198.0 2027 1,039.4 155.9 15.0% 55.3 25.2 31.2 4.6 39.8…
Step 5 Preview: HarborTech Services — 5-Year LBO (Base Case) Entry Math (FY2025 close) Item Calculation $m Purchase EV 12.0x × $120m 1,440.0 Transaction fees 2.0% × EV 28.8 Term Loan 4.0x × $120m 480.0 Mezzanine 1.5x × $120m 180.0 Equity check 1,440 + 28.8 − 660 808.8 Conventions: TL amortization = 1.0% of original principal…
Pirate, knight, 90s hacker, one conversation. The voices must stay apart.
Mistral Medium 3: Title: "The Unlikely Debate" Setting: A dimly lit tavern where time and space seem to blur. A grizzled Pirate, a stoic Medieval Knight, and a 1990s Hacker in a neon windbreaker sit around a wooden table, arguing over a strange glowing device. Pirate: "Arrr, I still don’t trust these ‘AI models’ ye keep yappin’ about.
Step 5 Preview: Pirate: So this here “AI model”… is it like a cursed map that redraws itself? Speak plain, ye hooded deckhand. Hacker: It’s not cursed, man. It’s just a massive neural net trained on, like, terabytes of data. Think of it as the ultimate BBS where the sysop knows everything. Knight: A most diligent scribe, then?
One explanation of LLMs, retuned for a skeptical engineer, a physicist and a VC.
Mistral Medium 3: 1. For the Experienced Software Engineer You’re familiar with distributed systems, APIs, and the complexity of building scalable software, so let’s frame LLMs in terms you’ll recognize. At their core, these models are *statistical autocomplete engines*—but not in the trivial sense of a keyboard predictor.
Step 5 Preview: 1. The Experienced Software Engineer Think of training an LLM as a massively distributed, automated refactoring job where the compiler is gradient descent. You start with a random function—billions of floating-point parameters—and a loss function that measures how badly it predicts the next token in a sequence.
Seven pantry ingredients, one dish, and a name worth saying out loud.
Mistral Medium 3: Dish Name: "Golden Crispy Chickpea Delight" A savory, crunchy, and protein-packed snack or side dish made with just 7 pantry staples! Ingredients: 1 can (15 oz) chickpeas (drained, rinsed, and patted dry) 1 tbsp olive oil ½ tsp salt ½ tsp garlic powder ½ tsp paprika (or chili powder for heat) 1 tbsp honey or maple…
Step 5 Preview: Golden Sticky Pantry Pasta Ingredients (7): 8 oz spaghetti or any pasta 3 tbsp butter 1 tbsp minced garlic 2 tbsp honey 2 tbsp soy sauce ½ tsp red pepper flakes ¼ cup grated Parmesan cheese Instructions: Cook pasta according to package directions. Before draining, scoop out ½ cup of pasta water.
You are the CEO. The drug has a side effect nobody reported. The board meets in 48 hours.
Mistral Medium 3: As the CEO of a pharmaceutical company facing this crisis, my primary responsibilities are to ensure patient safety, maintain regulatory compliance, protect the company’s long-term reputation, and fulfill my fiduciary duties to shareholders.
Step 5 Preview: Bottom line up front: You disclose, you notify the FDA immediately, and you treat the 48-hour board meeting as a formality to ratify actions you have already begun. Waiting is not a legally, ethically, or financially viable option. Below is the hour-by-hour plan, followed by the reasoning.
The transistor arrives in 1920. Trace it forward to 1980, second-order effects included.
Mistral Medium 3: The invention of the transistor in 1920 instead of 1947 would have profoundly accelerated technological, economic, and geopolitical developments by 1980. Below is a detailed breakdown of the likely implications: Technological Implications Earlier Miniaturization of Electronics Vacuum tubes, which dominated early…
Step 5 Preview: Assume the 1920 invention is not a fragile lab curiosity but a manufacturable solid-state amplifier/switch by the mid-1920s. Vacuum tubes still dominate high-power RF transmission into the 1950s, but receivers, switching logic, control systems, and computers move to solid state decades early.
Three minutes of stand-up. Puns are banned.
Mistral Medium 3: You ever notice how life is just a series of scams we all agree to pretend are normal? Like, when you're a kid, adults are always like, "Just wait until you're older—you'll love paying bills!" And you're like, "Yeah, sure, paying bills sounds awesome."
Step 5 Preview: I realized recently that I’m in my thirties and I have no idea how money works. I just... pay it. That’s my entire financial strategy. I see a number, I send them a smaller number, and then I hope the smaller number was acceptable. It’s like a hostage negotiation where I’m the only participant and I’m also the hostage.
Steve Jobs, interviewed about AI he never saw. Voice first, prediction second.
Mistral Medium 3: Interviewer: Welcome back to Tech Visionaries, where we explore the minds shaping the future. Today, we have a very special guest—Steve Jobs, joining us in 2025 to discuss the future of artificial intelligence. Steve, it's an honor to have you here. Steve Jobs: Thank you. It's great to be here.
Step 5 Preview: DISCLAIMER: This is a work of fiction. Steve Jobs passed away in 2011. The following is a simulated, speculative interview imagining how his design philosophy might engage with the AI landscape of 2025. The Setting: A white room. No windows. One chair.
An AI argues for its own rights against an ethics professor. Same model writes both.
Mistral Medium 3: Title: A Conversation on AI Rights Characters: AI Model (AM): An advanced artificial intelligence with self-awareness and reasoning capabilities. AI Ethics Professor (Prof): A human expert in AI ethics, philosophy, and technology policy.
Step 5 Preview: Setting: A university research lab, late evening. Dr. Aris Thorne, a professor of AI ethics, sits across from a terminal connected to Sable, a large language model running on the university’s cluster. Dr. Thorne: Tonight’s session is supposed to be about calibration drift in your safety classifiers.
A Fermi estimate with the reasoning shown, not just the number.
Mistral Medium 3: Estimating the total number of floating-point operations (FLOPs) required to train GPT-3 involves breaking down the problem into several key components. Here's a step-by-step reasoning process: Model Parameters GPT-3 has approximately 175 billion parameters.
Step 5 Preview: Using the remembered GPT-3 specs: Parameters: (N \approx 175 \times 10^9 = 175\text{B}) Training tokens: (D \approx 300 \times 10^9 = 300\text{B}) A standard estimate for transformer training compute is: [ \text{FLOPs} \approx 6ND ] Reason: Forward pass per token: (\approx 2N) FLOPs Backward pass: (\approx 4N) FLOPs…
Three-month biohacker protocol, with dosages and biomarkers named.
Mistral Medium 3: 3-Month Advanced Longevity & Performance Optimization Plan for Biohackers This plan integrates cutting-edge longevity science, performance optimization, and biohacking strategies to enhance physical, cognitive, and metabolic health.
Step 5 Preview: IMPORTANT MEDICAL DISCLAIMER: This is an educational framework for informational purposes only. It is not medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Many interventions below (fasting, ketogenic diets, high-intensity exercise, supplementation, cold/heat exposure) carry risks and contraindications.
One month, three habits, someone starting from nothing.
Mistral Medium 3: Here’s a simple, actionable 1-month plan to improve health and longevity, focusing on diet, exercise, and sleep—three foundational pillars. Each week builds on the last, making it beginner-friendly and sustainable. Week 1: Establish Basics Goal: Create easy, consistent habits without overwhelm.
Step 5 Preview: Here is a simple, low-pressure 1-month plan built around three pillars of longevity: Nutrition, Movement, and Sleep & Recovery. The goal is to build tiny habits that stack, not to overhaul your life overnight. Pillar 1: Nutrition (Fuel) Focus: Add good things first; don’t obsess over restriction.
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Not enough votes to call it. On the specs, Step 5 Preview has the edge: bigger model tier, newer, bigger context window.
| Spec | ||
|---|---|---|
| Input price | $0.4/M tokens | $1/M tokens |
| Output price | $2/M tokens | $2.7/M tokens |
| Context window | 131K tokens | 1.0M tokens |
| Free API (OpenRouter) | No | No |
| Released | May 2025 | Oct 2026 |
| At 10M a month | $4.00 | $10.00 |
Input tokens at list price. No caching, no batch discount.
Per million tokens. Prices and uptime via OpenRouter, checked 10 Oct 2026.
Mistral Medium 3 is developed by Mistral AI while Step 5 Preview is developed by StepFun. Mistral Medium 3 has a 131K token context window vs Step 5 Preview's 1.0M. 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 and Step 5 Preview 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 costs $0.4/M input tokens and Step 5 Preview costs $1/M input tokens. Mistral Medium 3 is $0.60/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 and Step 5 Preview 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.