Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.25 | $0.4 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $2 | $2 |
Verdict. Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) and Mistral Medium 3.1 split the benchmark comparison evenly at 1–1. The tiebreaker here is price, speed, and what you actually run them on.
Pricing. Both models sit in the budget bracket for output-token pricing. At 1.0× the per-million-token cost, Mistral Medium 3.1 is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Mistral Medium 3.1 makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) is strongest on Intelligence Index (29.9). Mistral Medium 3.1 leads on Coding Index (20.5), Intelligence Index (14.7).
Speed. On throughput, Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) generates tokens at 151 tok/s versus 106 tok/s — about 30% faster. On time-to-first-token, Mistral Medium 3.1 responds in 1470ms vs 2060ms, which matters most for chat-style UIs.
Provider. Alibaba and Mistral sell to overlapping but distinct developer audiences: Alibaba tends to ship frontier reasoning models with premium positioning, while Mistral often prices more aggressively. Your existing vendor relationships, billing, and SLA preferences may matter as much as the raw numbers above.
Workload cost. Workload scenarios (per million requests at 30M input + 15M output tokens): Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) costs $37.50 ($450/year); Mistral Medium 3.1 costs $42.00 ($504/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) ≈ $5.25/run, Mistral Medium 3.1 ≈ $6.00/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) ≈ $250/run, Mistral Medium 3.1 ≈ $280/run. Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) becomes more attractive at higher volume — the absolute per-token pricing difference compounds when you ship at scale.
Recommendation. Both models have legitimate use cases — the right answer depends on whether you are optimizing for benchmark ceiling, latency, or unit cost. Start with the cheaper / faster model, evaluate against your specific task, and only switch if the upgrade shows a meaningful lift.
Head-to-head deltas
Data from Artificial Analysis API — 12 benchmarks
Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.69/M tokens vs $0.80/M for Mistral Medium 3.1.
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) generates tokens faster at 151 tok/s vs 106 tok/s. However, Mistral Medium 3.1 has lower time-to-first-token (1.47s vs 2.06s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and Qwen3.5 35B A3B (Reasoning) for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.