MISTRAL VS ALIBABA
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus
Qwen3.5 Plus is about 3.3x cheaper than Mistral Medium 3.5 on a blended 3:1 input:output rate — the same 10K-in/2K-out request costs $0.0088 vs $0.03. Qwen3.5 Plus has the larger context window (1,000,000 vs 262,144 tokens).
Pricing verified
API pricing per 1M tokens
| Model | Input / 1M tokens | Output / 1M tokens | Blended (3:1 mix) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | $1.50 | $7.50 | $3.00 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.40 | $2.40 | $0.90 |
Rates from official Mistral pricing and official Alibaba pricing, checked 2026-08-11.
What a real workload costs
Example: one request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens, then that request at 100,000 runs per month.
| Model | Per request (10K in / 2K out) | Per month (100K requests) | Monthly delta |
|---|---|---|---|
| Mistral Medium 3.5 | $0.03 | $3,000 | +$2,120 |
| Qwen3.5 Plus | $0.0088 | $880 | — |
Model your own prompt sizes and volumes in the token cost analyzer, or check caching savings with the prompt caching calculator.
Specs side by side
| Spec | Mistral Medium 3.5 | Qwen3.5 Plus |
|---|---|---|
| Provider | Mistral | Alibaba |
| Context window | 262,144 tokens | 1,000,000 tokens |
| Model class | General text | General text |
| Tokenizer | Proprietary (counts estimated) | Proprietary (counts estimated) |
Count tokens for each model on its own page: Mistral Medium 3.5 token counter and Qwen3.5 Plus token counter. All Mistral models are on the Mistral Token Counter. All Alibaba models are on the Qwen Token Counter.
FAQ
Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus FAQ
Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
Qwen3.5 Plus is cheaper. At rates checked 2026-08-11, Mistral Medium 3.5 costs $1.50 input / $7.50 output per 1M tokens, while Qwen3.5 Plus costs $0.40 input / $2.40 output — about a 3.3x difference on a typical 3:1 input-heavy workload.
How much does a real request cost on Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Qwen3.5 Plus?
A request with 10,000 input tokens and 2,000 output tokens costs about $0.03 on Mistral Medium 3.5 and $0.0088 on Qwen3.5 Plus. At 100,000 such requests per month that is $3,000 vs $880 — a difference of $2,120 per month.
Which has the bigger context window, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Qwen3.5 Plus?
Qwen3.5 Plus. It supports 1,000,000 tokens of context versus 262,144 tokens — roughly 750,000 English words in one request.
Do Mistral Medium 3.5 and Qwen3.5 Plus count tokens the same way?
Not exactly. Mistral Medium 3.5 uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates) and Qwen3.5 Plus uses a proprietary tokenizer (counts are estimates). The same prompt will tokenize differently, which shifts effective cost per word.