Side-by-side comparison of pricing, 12 benchmarks, and generation speed.
| Metric | Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) | Mistral Medium 3 |
|---|---|---|
| Input ($/M tokens) | $0.18 | $0.4 |
| Output ($/M tokens) | $2.1 | $2 |
Verdict. Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) and Mistral Medium 3 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 1.1× the per-million-token cost, Mistral Medium 3 is meaningfully cheaper if your traffic is output-heavy (long completions, document generation, agent loops). Mistral Medium 3 makes more sense when output volume is low and absolute reasoning quality justifies the premium.
Strengths. Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) is strongest on Coding Index (9.0), Intelligence Index (8.3). Mistral Medium 3 leads on Intelligence Index (12.5).
Speed. On throughput, Mistral Medium 3 generates tokens at 54 tok/s versus 38 tok/s — about 29% faster. On time-to-first-token, Mistral Medium 3 responds in 1450ms vs 3810ms, 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 8B (Reasoning) costs $36.90 ($443/year); Mistral Medium 3 costs $42.00 ($504/year). At a smaller 5M-input/2M-output scale (single-developer tool or prototype): Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) ≈ $5.10/run, Mistral Medium 3 ≈ $6.00/run. At agent/realtime scale (200M input / 100M output per million requests): Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) ≈ $246/run, Mistral Medium 3 ≈ $280/run. Qwen3 8B (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 8B (Reasoning) is cheaper overall. Its blended price (3:1 input/output ratio) is $0.66/M tokens vs $0.80/M for Mistral Medium 3.
It's a tie — both models win 1 benchmarks each across 12 evaluated categories. See the detailed benchmark chart above for per-category results.
Mistral Medium 3 generates tokens faster at 54 tok/s vs 38 tok/s. However, Mistral Medium 3 has lower time-to-first-token (1.45s vs 3.81s).
Choose based on your priorities: Qwen3 8B (Reasoning) for lower cost, both perform similarly on benchmarks, and Mistral Medium 3 for faster generation. For latency-sensitive apps, check the TTFT comparison above.