AI Models · Open-Source vs Paid

GLM 5.2 Open vs Mistral Medium 3.1 Paid

GLM 5.2 vs Mistral Medium 3.1 compared — price per token, context window, multimodality, openness and which to choose. Can the open-source model replace the paid one? Full 2026 breakdown.

Prices & specs refreshed from live data · olud.ai

Open-model prices = cheapest provider via OpenRouter; official maker rates may be higher.

Choose GLM 5.2 if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Mistral Medium 3.1 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

GLM 5.2 vs Mistral Medium 3.1 specs

SpecGLM 5.2Mistral Medium 3.1
MakerZ.AIMistral AI
TypeOpen-weightProprietary
Context window1M tokens131K tokens
Input price$0.63/M · free self-host$0.4/M
Output price$1.96/M · free self-host$2/M
Vision / multimodalNoYes
Tool / function callingYesYes
Self-hostableYesNo (API only)
LicenseMITProprietary

Feature comparison

CapabilityGLM 5.2Mistral Medium 3.1
Open weights (downloadable)
Self-hostable
Runs fully offline
Vision / multimodal
Tool / function calling
1M+ context window

Benchmarks: GLM 5.2 vs Mistral Medium 3.1

Independent benchmark scores measured by Artificial Analysis. Higher is better (except latency).

GLM 5.2
Mistral Medium 3.1
Intelligence index
51.1
14.7
Coding index
68.8
20.5
GPQA
89.5%
58.8%
Humanity's Last Exam
40.1%
4.4%
Long Context Reasoning
71.3%
19.7%
SciCode
50.5%
33.8%
IFBench
73.3%
39.8%
τ²-Bench
99.1%
40.6%
τ-Bench Banking
26.8%
8.5%
Terminal-Bench
77.9%
13.9%
Terminal-Bench Hard
50.8%
10.6%
Math index
38.3
MMLU-Pro
68.3%
LiveCodeBench
40.6%
AIME 2025
38.3%
Speed
138.1 tok/s
0 tok/s
Latency
0.93s
0s
Intelligence per $
23.8
18.4

Benchmark data by Artificial Analysis.

How GLM 5.2 and Mistral Medium 3.1 score

🏆 Best value & openness: GLM 5.2 (4.6 vs 3.1 / 5)
CriterionGLM 5.2Mistral Medium 3.1
Cost-efficiency4.54.5
Context window5.03.5
Openness5.01.5
Self-hosting5.01.0
Multimodality3.55.0

Scores come from live data — output price (cost), context length, open vs closed weights (openness & self-hosting) and vision/tool support (multimodality). Raw task quality isn't scored here; it depends on your benchmark — see the verdict.

What each model is

GLM 5.2 Open

Z.AI · Open-weight

GLM 5.2 is a large-scale reasoning model from Z.ai. It supports text input and output with a 1M-token context window, and is suited for long-horizon agent workflows, project-level software engineering,...

Mistral Medium 3.1 Paid

Mistral AI · Proprietary

Mistral Medium 3.1 is an updated version of Mistral Medium 3, which is a high-performance enterprise-grade language model designed to deliver frontier-level capabilities at significantly reduced operational cost. It balances...

Other models in these families

These variants are tracked but not compared here — one page per family keeps the comparison readable.

Other variants tracked
GLM 5.1GLM 5GLM 5 TurboGLM 5V TurboGLM 4.7GLM 4.6GLM 4.7 FlashGLM 4.5GLM 4.6VGLM 4.5 AirGLM 4.5V

Frequently asked questions

Is GLM 5.2 as good as Mistral Medium 3.1?

GLM 5.2 is open-weight and competitive on many tasks, but Mistral Medium 3.1 may still lead on the hardest reasoning and agentic work. The gap keeps narrowing — benchmark both on your actual use case before deciding.

Can I run GLM 5.2 locally?

Yes. GLM 5.2 has open weights, so you can self-host it on your own GPUs or run it via a low-cost API. Mistral Medium 3.1 is API-only and cannot be self-hosted.

GLM 5.2 vs Mistral Medium 3.1 — which should I pick in 2026?

Choose GLM 5.2 if you want to self-host, keep your data private and skip per-token fees — it's open-weight and runs on your own hardware. Choose Mistral Medium 3.1 if you want frontier capability through a managed API with zero infrastructure to run.

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