Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) vs Mistral Medium 3.5

Which is better for the money: Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 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 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)Off the frontier

Intelligence: 49.60
Total cost: $11161

MistralMistral Medium 3.5Off the frontier

Intelligence: 14.20
Total cost: $1264

Verdict

Depends on your budget

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) scores 35.4 points higher (49.6 vs 14.2) but costs 8.8× as much to run the benchmark ($11161 vs $1264; flagship vs premium cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) when you need intelligence above 14.2, and Mistral Medium 3.5 when 14.2 is enough.

Metric	Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback)	Mistral Medium 3.5	Difference
Intelligence (higher is better)	49.6	14.2	−71.4% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 71.4% less intelligent
Total AA cost (lower is better)	$11,160.86	$1,263.80	−88.7% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 88.7% cheaper
End-to-end time (lower is better)	85.37s	17.77s	−79.2% Mistral Medium 3.5 is 79.2% faster
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 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): 71.4% less intelligence, 88.7% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 79.2% faster end-to-end.

Open this matchup in the interactive picker Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback): what beats it Mistral Medium 3.5: what beats it

Today's Pareto frontier

Against the frontier

Claude Fable 5 (Max, Opus 4.8 Fallback) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Max, Default Fallback) scores 57.60 for $8708.
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 (Max, Opus 4.8 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/mistral-medium-3-5 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-fable-5/mistral-medium-3-5?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill