GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct vs Mistral Medium 3.1
| Signal | GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct | Delta | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
|---|---|---|---|
Capabilities | 33 | -33 | |
Pricing | 98 | -- | |
Context window size | 57 | -24 | |
Recency | 0 | -67 | |
Output Capacity | 60 | +40 | |
| Overall Result | 1 wins | of 5 | 3 wins |
Score History
40
current score
Tied
right now
40
current score
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct
OpenAI
Mistral Medium 3.1
Mistral AI
Mistral Medium 3.1 saves you $110.00/month
That's $1320.00/year compared to GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct at your current usage level of 100K calls/month.
| Metric | GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct | Mistral Medium 3.1 | Winner |
|---|---|---|---|
| Overall Score | 40 | 40 | -- |
| Rank | #360 | #322 | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Quality Rank | #360 | #322 | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Adoption Rank | #360 | #322 | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Parameters | -- | -- | -- |
| Context Window | 4K | 131K | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Pricing | $1.50/$2.00/M | $0.40/$2.00/M | -- |
| Signal Scores | |||
| Capabilities | 33 | 67 | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Pricing | 98 | 98 | GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct |
| Context window size | 57 | 81 | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Recency | 0 | 67 | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
| Output Capacity | 60 | 20 | GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct |
Our score (0-100) is driven by benchmark performance (90%) from Arena Elo ratings, MMLU, GPQA, HumanEval, SWE-bench, and 15+ standardized evaluations. Capabilities and context window serve as tiebreakers (10%). Learn more about our methodology.
Scores 40/100 (rank #360), placing it in the top -24% of all 290 models tracked.
Scores 40/100 (rank #322), placing it in the top -11% of all 290 models tracked.
With only a 0-point gap, these models are in the same performance tier. The practical difference in output quality is minimal - your choice should depend on pricing, latency requirements, and specific feature needs.
Choose GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct when you need:
- Budget-friendly applications with moderate quality requirements
Choose Mistral Medium 3.1 when you need:
- Processing long documents or large codebases (131K token context)
- Multimodal workflows that require image understanding
- Agentic applications using tool/function calling
Mistral Medium 3.1 offers 31% better value per quality point. At 1M tokens/day, you'd spend $36.00/month with Mistral Medium 3.1 vs $52.50/month with GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct - a $16.50 monthly difference.
Both models have comparable response speeds. For most applications, the latency difference is negligible.
When latency matters most: Interactive chatbots, IDE code completion, real-time translation, and user-facing applications where response time directly impacts experience. For batch processing, background summarization, or offline analysis, latency is less critical.
Code generation & review
Based on overall model capabilities and architecture for coding tasks like generating functions, debugging, and refactoring
Customer support chatbot
Suitable for user-facing chat with competitive response times. GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct also offers lower per-token costs for high-volume support
Long document analysis
Larger context window (131K tokens) can process longer documents, contracts, and research papers in a single pass
Batch data extraction
Lower output pricing ($2.00/M) reduces costs when processing thousands of records daily
Creative writing & content
Higher overall composite score (40/100) correlates with better nuance, coherence, and style in long-form content
Image understanding & OCR
Supports vision input - can analyze screenshots, diagrams, photos, and scanned documents directly
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct and Mistral Medium 3.1 are extremely close in overall performance (only 0 points apart). Your best choice depends entirely on which specific strengths matter most for your use case.
By Use Case
Best for Quality
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct
Marginally better benchmark scores; both are excellent
Best for Cost
Mistral Medium 3.1
31% lower pricing; better value at scale
Best for Reliability
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct
Higher uptime and faster response speeds
Best for Prototyping
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct
Stronger community support and better developer experience
Best for Production
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct
Wider enterprise adoption and proven at scale
by OpenAI
- Choose for Quality - Marginally better benchmark scores; both are excellent
- Choose for Reliability - Higher uptime and faster response speeds
- Choose for Prototyping - Stronger community support and better developer experience
- Choose for Production - Wider enterprise adoption and proven at scale
| Capability | GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Vision (Image Input)differs | ||
| Function Callingdiffers | ||
| Streaming | ||
| JSON Mode | ||
| Reasoning | ||
| Web Search | ||
| Image Output |
GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct
OpenAI
Mistral Medium 3.1
Mistral AI
Mistral Medium 3.1 saves you $1.98/month
That's 39% cheaper than GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct at 1,000 tokens/request and 100 requests/day.
Assumes 60% input / 40% output token ratio per request. Actual costs may vary based on your usage pattern.
| Parameter | GPT-3.5 Turbo Instruct | Mistral Medium 3.1 |
|---|---|---|
| Context Window | 4K | 131K |
| Max Output Tokens | 4,096 | -- |
| Open Source | No | No |
| Created | Sep 28, 2023 | Aug 13, 2025 |