Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) vs Mistral Large 3
Which is better for the money: Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) by Anthropic or Mistral Large 3 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 Opus 4.8 (Max) scores 32.5 points higher (41.8 vs 9.3) but costs 148× as much to run the benchmark ($6874 vs $46.4; flagship vs budget cost classes). They are not alternatives at one budget: pick Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) when you need intelligence above 9.3, and Mistral Large 3 when 9.3 is enough.
| Metric | Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) | Mistral Large 3 | Difference |
|---|---|---|---|
| Intelligence (higher is better) | 41.8 | 9.3 | −77.8% Mistral Large 3 is 77.8% less intelligent |
| Total AA cost (lower is better) | $6,873.86 | $46.41 | −99.3% Mistral Large 3 is 99.3% cheaper |
| End-to-end time (lower is better) | 36.92s | 7.18s | −80.6% Mistral Large 3 is 80.6% faster |
| Price per 1M tokens (in / out) | $5.00 / $25.0 | $0.50 / $1.50 | |
| Input modalities | Text, Image | Text, Image |
Mistral Large 3 vs Claude Opus 4.8 (Max): 77.8% less intelligence, 99.3% less cost to run the AA benchmark, and 80.6% faster end-to-end.
Today's Pareto frontier
Against the frontier
- Claude Opus 4.8 (Max) is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, Claude Opus 5.5 (Xhigh, Default Fallback) scores 56.00 for $4057.
- Mistral Large 3 is off the frontier: at the same or lower cost, GPT-6 Luna (Medium) scores 29.90 for $31.2.
Claude Opus 4.8 (Max)Mistral Large 3Today's Pareto frontierOpen-weights frontierEvery other model
Matchup
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Accept: text/markdown or ?format=md returns this page as Markdown. JSON: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/mistral-large-3 · Markdown: /api/v1/compare/claude-opus-4-8/mistral-large-3?format=md · llms.txt · agent skill