Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) vs Mistral Small 3.2
Which is better for the money: Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.2 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) scores 13.7 points higher (20.7 vs 7.0) but costs 12× as much to run the benchmark ($1501 vs $122; premium vs mid-range cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) when you need intelligence above 7.0, and Mistral Small 3.2 when 7.0 is enough.
| Metric | Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) | Mistral Small 3.2 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 20.7 | 7.0 | −66.2% Mistral Small 3.2 is 66.2% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $1,501.22 | $121.78 | −91.9% Mistral Small 3.2 is 91.9% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 21.58s | 11.35s | −47.4% Mistral Small 3.2 is 47.4% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $3.00 / $15.0 | $0.07 / $0.20 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.2 vs Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning): 66.2% less intelligence, 91.9% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 47.4% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.
- Mistral Small 3.2 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, MiMo-V2.6-Flash scores 37.90 for $110.
Claude 4.5 Sonnet (Reasoning)Mistral Small 3.2Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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