Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) by Anthropic or Mistral Medium 3.5 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-25.

Trade-off

AnthropicClaude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 48.90
Total cost: $3983

MistralMistral Medium 3.5Off the frontier

Intelligence: 14.20
Total cost: $1264

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… scores 34.7 points higher (48.9 vs 14.2) but costs 3.2× as much to run the benchmark ($3983 vs $1264; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallb… when you need intelligence above 14.2, and Mistral Medium 3.5 when 14.2 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)	Mistral Medium 3.5	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	48.9	14.2	−71.0% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 71.0% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$3,983.28	$1,263.80	−68.3% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 68.3% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	14.35s	17.85s	+24.4% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 24.4% slower
Price per 1M tokens (in / out)	$10.0 / $50.0	$1.50 / $7.50
Input modalities	Text, Image	Text, Image

Mistral Medium 3.5 vs Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): 71.0% less intelligence, 68.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 24.4% slower end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback): what beats it Mistral Medium 3.5: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Kimi K3.1 Pro scores 55.10 for $3117.
Mistral Medium 3.5 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6.1 Sol (Max) scores 51.80 for $1082.

Claude Fable 5.1 (Medium, Default Fallback)Mistral Medium 3.5Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model

Matchup

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Agents: Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/mistral-medium-3-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5-1-medium/mistral-medium-3-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill