Compare / Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Inkling Small

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Inkling Small

Which is cheaper, which is more capable, and which does better at each kind of work, from 32 results on 3 sources that measured both models.

Mistral Medium 3.5
Mistral · profile
Inkling Small
Thinkingmachines · profile
Results compared
32
Shared sources
3

Mistral Medium 3.5 or Inkling Small? The short answer

  • Inkling Small is cheaper: $0.64 against $3.00 per million tokens, 4.7 times less.
  • Inkling Small scores higher on the Artificial Analysis Intelligence Index: 25.7 against 14.2.
  • On our business benchmarks, Mistral Medium 3.5 ranks higher for writing and sticking to the facts.
  • On our business benchmarks, Inkling Small ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and speed under pressure.

At a glance

Mistral Medium 3.5Inkling Small
Price per million tokens$1.50 in · $7.50 out$0.45 in · $1.20 out
Blended (3 in : 1 out)$3.00$0.64
Cheapest host, blended$3.00 (Mistral)–
Intelligence Index14.225.7
Spring Prompt overall21–
Output speed, tokens a second163173
Context window262,144 tokens524,288 tokens
WeightsClosedOpen
Developer based inFrancethe US

Prices are the developer's list price where we have read it, otherwise the typical host on OpenRouter; see every model's price. Intelligence and speed from Artificial Analysis.

Which is better for what

Each model's rank among models available today, for each kind of work, from our own benchmarks and licensed sources. The better rank is in green.

Use caseMistral Medium 3.5Inkling Small
Product listingsTurning a sparse product feed and photos into listings that can go live 13 of 19 not measured
Decks from an analysisTurning a finished analysis into a deck you could present as it is 14 of 18 not measured
Marketing planningPlanning a year of ad spend without overspending 18 of 18 not measured
Agents and tool useMulti-step tasks with tools: support desks, coding agents, function calls 87 of 161 68 of 161
Reasoning and knowledgeHard questions across science, maths and general knowledge 119 of 195 58 of 195
WritingWhat people prefer in blind comparisons, and judged writing quality 85 of 187 100 of 187
Sticking to the factsSummarising without inventing things, and factual answers 99 of 153 126 of 153
Speed under pressureGood decisions against a real clock (fast chess) 8 of 21 4 of 21

From our research

Every shared result

BenchmarkMetricMistral Medium 3.5Inkling Small
BulletBenchmeasured by usCost per gameUS dollars $0.0354$0.0075
BulletBenchmeasured by usGames lost on time% of games 0.0%0.0%
BulletBenchmeasured by usInvalid moves% of moves 0.4%7.2%
BulletBenchmeasured by usLadder Eloladder Elo 572529
BulletBenchmeasured by usMedian move timemilliseconds 0.5 s0.6 s
BulletBenchmeasured by usCost per gameUS dollars $0.0297$0.0077
BulletBenchmeasured by usGames lost on time% of games 0.0%0.0%
BulletBenchmeasured by usInvalid moves% of moves 0.0%5.3%
BulletBenchmeasured by usLadder Eloladder Elo 529571
BulletBenchmeasured by usMedian move timemilliseconds 0.5 s0.6 s
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedConfirmed task successIPS effect estimate -0.16-0.21
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedPraise over complaintIPS effect estimate -0.15-0.21
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedSteerabilityIPS effect estimate -0.07-0.12
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedTool groundingIPS effect estimate -0.02-0.00
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4301,425
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedBusiness, management and financeArena rating 1,4301,408
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedCreative writingArena rating 1,3981,313
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedExpert promptsArena rating 1,4341,445
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedInstruction followingArena rating 1,4211,393
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedOverallArena rating 1,4261,405
Arena (formerly LMArena)reportedWriting, literature and languageArena rating 1,4041,344
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Coding Indexindex score 46.952.9
Artificial AnalysisreportedArtificial Analysis Intelligence Indexindex score 14.225.7
Artificial AnalysisreportedGPQA Diamond% of questions 74.8%89.5%
Artificial AnalysisreportedHumanity's Last Exam% of questions 13.8%33.3%
Artificial AnalysisreportedLong-context reasoning (AA-LCR)% of questions 69.3%75.7%
Artificial AnalysisreportedOutput speedtokens per second 163173
Artificial AnalysisreportedSciCode% of problems 40.2%49.7%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 2.1% of tasks 50.6%55.1%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTerminal-Bench 4.0% of tasks 0.0%1.0%
Artificial AnalysisreportedTime to first answer tokenseconds 12.913.6
Artificial AnalysisreportedΤ-bench banking% of tasks 15.1%18.8%

Bold green marks the better value on that metric. Where a source reports ranges that overlap, the difference may not be meaningful; see the benchmark page for ranges.

Quick answers

Is Mistral Medium 3.5 better than Inkling Small?

It depends on the task. Among models available today, on our benchmarks and licensed sources, Mistral Medium 3.5 ranks higher for writing and sticking to the facts; Inkling Small ranks higher for agents and tool use, reasoning and knowledge and speed under pressure.

Which is cheaper, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Inkling Small?

Inkling Small costs $0.64 per million tokens (three input to one output), against $3.00 for Mistral Medium 3.5.

Which is faster, Mistral Medium 3.5 or Inkling Small?

Inkling Small writes about 173 tokens a second on its usual API, against 163 for Mistral Medium 3.5 (Artificial Analysis).

Run Mistral Medium 3.5 and Inkling Small on your own prompt

Benchmarks aren't your data. Try both side by side in the playground, with the cost of every answer.