Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) vs Mistral Small 3.1
Which is better for the money: Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) by Anthropic or Mistral Small 3.1 by Mistral? Intelligence, total benchmark cost, and end-to-end time from Artificial Analysis & other sources, snapshot 2026-10-24.
Trade-off
Verdict
Depends on your budget
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) scores 27.4 points higher (34.5 vs 7.1) but costs 2.0× as much to run the benchmark ($56.4 vs $27.8; mid-range vs budget cost classes). Pick Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) when the extra intelligence is worth the premium, otherwise Mistral Small 3.1.
| Metric | Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) | Mistral Small 3.1 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 34.5 | 7.1 | −79.4% Mistral Small 3.1 is 79.4% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $56.36 | $27.82 | −50.6% Mistral Small 3.1 is 50.6% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 10.41s | 11.99s | +15.2% Mistral Small 3.1 is 15.2% slower |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $0.10 / $0.50 | $0.08 / $0.14 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Small 3.1 vs Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium): 79.4% less intelligence, 50.6% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 15.2% slower end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium) is on today's frontier: nothing is both smarter and cheaper.
- Mistral Small 3.1 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Low) scores 21.50 for $10.6.
Claude Haiku 5.5 (Medium)Mistral Small 3.1Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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